Quote from: tmoonpi on March 23, 2014, 11:50:09 PM

Somebody has to learn how to catch these bitcoin thiefs sometime soon or confidence in Bitcoin will eventualy fade. Seems Bitcoin theft is the safest form of crime nowadays. I've even run across a few articles on how to steal bitcoins and an industry is growing around laundering bitcoins.

I know the feeling, I've been ripped off before to the tune of 5 BTC myself, in that case it was a scam 12 month hosted mining deal where I got a couple of days of mining out of them before they vanished. I've had many thoughts about how I might track them down and where they might be located.

At the end of the day though you have to ask yourself - what would you do if you did find the thief?

Let's say you managed to track your thief down to a name and home address, and for the point of this argument let's say he lived only a couple of hours away from you.

Now what? I doubt the police would consider blockchain data as evidence so unless you were prepared to take matters into your own hand where does it really leave you?