How to Catch a Cybercrook

The phone rings at the FBI Crime Squad and a "complaint agent" answers. Most calls are short, not too sweet, and not terribly satisfying for the person seeking help. "We get a lot of phone calls from people who say that somebody has hacked their home computer," says Day. Others report death threats delivered in online chat rooms.

Unsettling as such events are for the victims, most callers are told that there's nothing the FBI can do for them. For one thing, federal computer-crime statutes don't even kick in unless there is at least $5,000 damage or an attack on a so-called "federal interest computer"-a broad category that includes computers owned by the federal government, as well as those involved in interstate banking, communications, or commerce. In places especially rife with computer crime, like New York City, the intervention bar is even higher.