Our brothers-from-another-mother at Consumerist helped catch the scoundrel who stole an innocent man's iPhone by using the power of potential internet embarrassment. Even more impressive, the entire episode took under an hour.

Consumerist reader Dino's 64-year-old father had set up a rule that every email sent from his iPhone would blind-CC his personal email address. After he lost the phone, he received a mess of pictures that the kid who "found" it was taking of himself. After the story was posted on the Consumerist, other do-gooders tracked the kid down on Facebook and Hi5 and managed to get him to actually respond. The kid requested that all the pictures be taken down, and in exchange he'd return the iPhone.

This whole series of events took place in 55 minutes, which we're sure would be a record if a record existed for such a situation. Score: internet 1, photo-happy thief 0. [Consumerist]

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