Justice 2.0 Is Served Thursday, July 06, 2006

Okay, so I'm really late on this one, but it's such a great story, I had to follow up.

The tale of the stolen sidekick (see my previous post) has come to its conclusion. For those who don't know, the story shakes out like this: Ivanna, who lives in Manhattan, leaves her Sidekick in a cab. She logs on to her account only to find that a sixteen-year-old girl had taken it and had even taken pictures of herself with it. Ivanna asks her friend Evan for help, and they contact the thief, asking for it to be returned. The ignoramus decides to threaten and taunt them, and so Evan, in turn, decides to make the pictures public, publishing the thief's AOL screen name, her MySpace page, and her pictures, saying that he'd like to "embarass the thief as much as possible" and "teach them a lesson on the etiquette of returning peoples [sic] lost belongings".

The website received half a million hits in its first day and over a million a day since, with support pouring in from lawyers, police, and general well-wishers from all corners of the Web. It spawned a mini-phenomenon in the blogosphere and elsewhere on the Internet, including these "enhanced" pics of of the thief, this ridiculous "vlog" report, and many remixes of this video of the Sasha shaking her larcenous booty with a friend. It eventually even made its way to the New York Times (read their woefully sanitized version of the story here). And on June 20th, just two weeks since the site went up, the police arrested Miss Sasha Gomez of Corona, charged her with possession of stolen property in the fifth degree, and returned the Sidekick to its rightful owner.

Evan and Ivanna have decided to put the now-famous Sidekick up for auction on eBay, where it is currently fetching $3,250 with more than thirty hours left. They are donating one third of the money to the Edwin Gould Services for Children and Families and splitting the rest to recoup lost income.

All hail the power of the Internet to bring shame and ruin upon the wrongdoers, be they cellphone thieves or the "Dog Poop Girl"!