Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Times Square Car Bomb Car Bought on Craigslist

by Amar Toor on May 4, 2010 at 10:03 AM

Now that we've had the opportunity to catch our collective breath after Saturday's Times Square bomb scare, police have begun piecing the clues together. And Monday night, they finally nabbed a suspect -- thanks, in part, to Craigslist.

Authorities have reportedly identified one "person of interest" in connection with the bomb scare: Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally hailing from Pakistan. According to the New York Times, police arrested Shahzad at Kennedy Airport, where he was presumably attempting to flee the country on a flight to Dubai. Officials were able to trace the incident back to Shahzad after they followed the breadcrumb trail that his infamous 1993 Nissan Pathfinder left all over the Internet. As it turns out, the original owner of the car recently put it up for sale on at least two sites -- NothingButCars.net and, of course, Craigslist. The Pathfinder was listed for $1,300, and had over 141,000 miles on it. But according to the online ads, it was "CLEAN inside and out!!"

The owner reportedly told police that the person who had bought the car appeared to be of "Middle Eastern" or "Hispanic" origins, and, according to FOX News, that he'd paid the sum in $100 bills. With no paper trail of the actual transaction, then, it's hard to imagine how police actually managed to pinpoint a suspect in so little time. Surely, investigators used other intelligence-gathering mechanisms that are far more sophisticated than a simple Craigslist trace, but it's still good to know that a site notorious for illicit transactions can, under certain circumstances, play even a small role in bringing people to justice. [From: New York Times and FOX News]

Tags: craigslist, crime, fbi, law, nothingbutcars.net, police, terrorism, terrorists, TimesSquare, TimesSquareBomb, TimesSquareBombAttempt, top, web

Comments

1

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular