A remarkable detective story

I found myself engrossed by the story of a private investigator's search for a career criminal.  Wired magazine tells the story.  Here's an excerpt.

Mullen, the ACS executive said, would not be an easy man to find. The executive told Gomez that Mullen was wanted by the FBI for stealing more than $2 million from federal government agencies. So far the authorities had failed to locate him, as had the three private investigators who’d already taken a crack at finding Mullen and the boat. If she could get Morning Star back, the man told Gomez, they’d pay her $10,000, plus she could keep any criminal reward money being offered for the fugitive.

As she heard the details, Gomez felt what she calls “that booting-up buzz.” Staying on the run from the FBI is no easy feat. Neither is evading three professional investigators dispatched by some of the country’s biggest debt recovery agencies. Mullen had clearly figured out something—some technique for covering his tracks or otherwise keeping ahead of his pursuers—that put him well above the average con. Gomez wanted the case.

She began with a Google search and became even more fascinated by Mullen when she read a bulletin posted on a sketchy-looking civic discussion website called City-Data.com: Ryan Eugene Mullen was said to have been born in New York City on November 11, 1977, stood 6´3˝, weighed 200 pounds, and had light brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a deep voice. He wore a size 15 shoe and was an “avid runner and tanner” who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and tested at a near-genius IQ level as a teenager, Gomez read. He also possessed “violent tendencies,” having been incarcerated at a young age for beating his girlfriend and menacing a friend with a knife. And apparently he had stolen the $2 million from the government in multiple cybercrimes that put him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in 1999. If accurate, Mullen had been a fugitive for 14 years.

How had such a man stayed in the shadows for so long? She had never seen a case quite like it. “My circuits were firing,” Gomez recalls.

There's much more at the link.  It's a long, intriguing story with twists and turns enough to satisfy the most hardened reader of detective stories - except that this one's true.  Recommended reading.

Peter