Checkmate, Renniel

I'm trying to explore the psychological aspects of it. If I was the scammer, I'd be a complete idiot with those slip ups...

-- Renniel, over at aa419.org

Well, Renniel, the game is up. We now have indisputable proof that you are the scammer.

If you've used Blogger, you might now that it provides you with some statistics about visits to your blog. These statistics are very basic. They don't allow you to see visitors' IP addresses or track an individual's movements. However, you can get free widgets to put on your blogs that do allow you to do these things. For instance, there's the visitor tracker widget provided by TraceMyIP.org. You can sign up for a free account with them and they'll provide you with a JavaScript widget that you place on your blog. If you have multiple blogs, then you'll have multiple widgets, but an individual will maintain a unique identity across all of these blogs. This widget records the IPs of visitors, their browser types, and other information, and puts it into a database. You can then view all this information on their website. The really great thing about it is that it not only records IPs, it also uses cookies to keep track of people. This way, if someone changes his IP, you'll still know who he is when he visits your blogs again because the cookie that was placed on his computer uniquely identifies him.

If there's a particular individual you're interested in, you can tag him and put him in a contacts list. You give him a name and you'll easily be able to view all of his activity by looking him up in your contacts list and clicking a link.

Well, folks, here's what I did. On this blog, I set up a hidden page. It was a standalone page, not a blog post. Furthermore, there were no links to it anywhere on this site, so unless you knew the URL for it you wouldn't be able to see it. I put a TraceMyIP.org tracker on that page and I sent the URL for the page to Renniel via Facebook and I also emailed it to him at djadulesentz@gmail.com. The page is now titled "Does this look familiar?"

I also created another blog, brianaxcore.blogspot.com. "Brianaxcore" is the name of one of the gmail accounts used by the scammer. On this new blog, I also set up a hidden page and put an IP tracker on it. Then I emailed the URL for the page to three of the accounts that the scammer has used: brianaxcore@gmail.com, domerightx@ymail.com, and therighttoprivacypaper@hotmail.com.

Here are the visitor tracking projects I created:



I then monitored the hits for these pages. At 12:26 AM (11:26 AM Eastern time) there was a hit on the hidden page on brianaxcore.blogspot.com. The IP address of the visitor was 98.221.196.186 which belongs to Comcast Cable in Jersey City. I tagged this visitor and gave him the name Renniel Fernandez.



At 1:32 AM (12:32 AM Eastern time) there was a hit on the hidden page on this blog. And can you guess who that visitor was?



And here is a summary of Renniel's browsing activity across both blogs. (Note: I removed the widgets from the pages after I had collected the data I wanted so that no one would be able to get access to the JavaScript code after I made all of this public. Hence no more hits will be recorded. Also, note that it mentions three projects but you only see two. That's because Renniel never visited the third one.)



So, how are you going to explain all of this, Renniel? What sort of story will you come up with this time? Oh, let me guess... the scammer was able to get a remote access trojan installed on your Mac and so he's operating from your computer. Is that it? Or do you have something even more unbelievable to tell us?

Face it, son, you have been beaten. Hell, you were beaten back in May when I tracked you down and found your Facebook account. Even though there was no smoking gun, the way that you behaved when you messaged me convinced me that you were the scammer. It was those subtle things like that first word you said to my "Lauren" profile:



Fake. Why would you immediately say that to her, but not say anything like that at all to the other profile I used to communicate with you, when they were both practically blank, when there was nothing that made either of them appear more genuine than the other?



Because you were playing around. She was your fake identity and you amused yourself by immediately calling her out as a fake. It was obvious to me, even though I couldn't "prove it". And this is just one example of your behavior that indicated but did not prove your guilt. But now, nothing more needs to be proven.

It's time to admit defeat, boy. Are you going to finally come clean, and admit that you're guilty, or are you going to remain stubborn, and continue to lie and embarrass yourself even more?