I am in LE (well, investigations anyway). For the most part you are smack on! However I suspect this is ''not'' the thief - even after such a short time. As po

I am in LE (well, investigations anyway). For the most part you are smack on! However I suspect this is ''not'' the thief - even after such a short time. As pointed out elsewhere they will shift it off pretty quickly. From the text of the mail the person probably knew it was dodgy. So it's probably been fenced and then sold on - the person probably knows or has a friend who knows the fence (but not the thief) [this is just a guess, but it is usually what happens]. Second the advice to get LE involved; in fact it is crucial that he does so. By reporting as much as possible the police know about all the crimes. So, for example, if they grab someone on theft and can't link him to the specific incident they are investigating they may still be able to link him to your theft - because it is on record (this happened the other month, we had a stolen laptop to examine, no evidence... but the serial number of the external HDD with it matched on reported stolen 10 months ago). In terms of tracking down this person, there are a few ways to do it. Where did the email come from (i.e. webmail, or the PC?) and from what address? You might be able to geolocate an IP address to get a rough location (this is useful information for the police because they may be aware of fences/thieves in that area to question). If it is webmail the police would need a warrant, which they might get in this case due to the explicitness of the case. If the laptop is signing into chat etc. then perhaps you could convince the person to talk directly to you via that - at which point the police could try to get a warrant for the chat providers records and track him down. Move quickly, the IP information can go stale very quickly.