On Sat, 5 Jul 2014, C. A. Fillekes wrote:
Furthermore, since the internet is everywhere, I pointed out (or did you stop reading after I mentioned that we don't actually know the gender of the scammer?) Markus has the option of pursuing this in a jurisdiction where the penalties for criminal defamation are the harshest. It would not have to be in the US.
Unless one or more of the plaintiffs is located a country with the harshest penalities, or a plaintiff can otherwise demonstrate how people in country XYZ are being harmed by the scammer's actions, I don't see that going very far. A plaintiff in Germany trying to bring a case to court in Singapore against a defendant in the United States isn't going to work so well. I am not a lawyer, but my guess is that the case would be thrown out because the plaintiff would lack standing to bring a case to court in that country. Yes, the global Internet is a global communications tool, but that doesn't mean you can cherry-pick which country to use in trying a case just because the extortion is taking place over the Internet.
Finally, you fail to address the one very simple way I described to determine who this scammer is: follow the money. Make a small partial payment on this supposed "debt" and see who cashes the check. Much easier than trying to follow "him" around on the internet, though that would be made easier in the course of negotiating a partial payment.
This is much easier to do once law enforcement agencies are engaged. They can trace the money trail more throughly and effectively than you or I can, as civilians. jms