Ok, I am making progress on the License verification front, but nothing solid to report as yet. 

I am having some trouble getting the domain privacy company to understand the current situation (the keep telling me to contact the domain owner via their form - which I have of course already tried).  However, I am persisting on this front for now.

I have also been checking out some options for engaging a Private Investigator in the area where Tom's driver's license indicates he lives.  I have found another PI who works only 20 min away from Tom's address and charges $80 per hour plus travel.  The first PI lived an hour away and charges $100 ph with a minimum of 4 hours billable.  A third PI has not returned either of the 2 emails I sent to them in the last week.

I am thinking that if the license is legit, we could contract a PI to pay Tom a visit and (gently) try to ascertain what's going on.  I am hoping that a number of shareholders would be willing to chip in and help me pay for this.  I imagine that it might take 2-3hrs for this initial work - so the cost would be $160-240 in total.  If we could get 25 shareholders to put in $10 (~0.017 BTC @ $580/BTC) each, that would cover it.  I would be happy to use some kind of Escrow if that's what everyone wanted.

What does everyone think about that idea?