In France, for any criminal case (theft is one of them), the district attorney decides whether an investigating magistrate should be designed to supervise the investigations or not (in which case, it means the state is not willing to go after the alleged, known or unknown, perpetrator). However, in case of a negative answer, the victim can choose to go forward anyway. In this case, the district attorney must design an investigating judge, and the judge must do whatever it takes to identify the alleged perpetrator such as asking for connection logs, domain name ownership information, and so on (even if he lives abroad, thanks to treaties between cooperating countries).

At the end of the investigation, the judge decides if the alleged perpetrator (if he has been identified) should be sent to trial or not, according to what has been uncovered. But in any case, the plaintiff and his lawyers will be given access to the investigation results. They may even request that the investigating judge starts some procedures that they deem useful to retrieve the identity of the alleged perpetrator, or to prove that the criminal behavior took place.

If the alleged perpetrator does not attend his trial, he can be sentenced anyway, and a warrant will be issued if he got jail time.