Amir Massoud Tofangsazan: Wikis

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Amir Massoud Tofangsazan

Amir Tofangsazan is a resident of Barnet, United Kingdom of Iranian origin who is alleged to have defrauded Thomas Sawyer [810], an eBay buyer also in the UK. In an example of Internet Vigilantism, Thomas erected a satirical blog and popularized it in order to shame Tofangsazan into refunding his money and apologizing. The blogger id he used is <code>laptopguy</code>.

The victim allegedly finally received, albeit two months late, a laptop of lower specifications to those advertised. Furthermore, the appliance was allegedly not operable even with the new charger it required. <code>laptopguy</code> was eventually able to recover data stored on the hard disk of the laptop, upon which he allegedly discovered numerous items of personal and financial information relating to Amir, as well as pornography (including gay porn) and what appear to be camera phone shots of the legs of women on the London Underground. He was also able to access Amir's webmail, and mass-mail all his contacts with direction on how to access a blog featuring the aforementioned photos and information.

http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/

The blog, written from an imaginary Amir's point of view, experienced surging popularity, namely after being featured on popular websites such as Digg.com (which has been linked to being the cause of Internet Vigilantism action in the past) reaching over 1,000,000 page hits in 8 days in the month of May 2006, and was featured in major media outlets, such as the Daily Mail, The BBC, the London Evening Standard, attesting to the disdain for online fraudsters felt by the general internet populace. Thomas Sawyer, AKA <code>laptopguy</code> was dubbed 'eBay Avenger' by the Daily Mail. This theme of Fraudster and avenger is found in many of the caricatures of Amir found in the follow up blog.

Current Blog stats

Over 2,000,000 views as of 01/06/06 09:00 GMT

Negative effects

The posting of this information has had negative effects for Amir, making his life "a living hell" reportedly[811] on his personal life, claiming to have received threatening phonecalls of a racist nature.

Amir has protested his innocence, claiming the laptop had been used by someone else and that the photos posted on the blog had nothing to do with him (despite featuring in many of the photos), and that the laptop was in working condition when he had sent it to the buyer.

Amir's friends

The Daily Mail published a page 3 photo [812] of "Christina and Sam"; photos of them were also found on Amir's hard drive. In the forums a certain "Christina Copeland" has been actively defending Amir. It is suspected that the Christina in the photos may in fact be Christina Copeland. She has a web site [813] containing some of the same photos [814] found on Amir's laptop.

Other scams Amir is accused of

There is a report that another person was scammed when attempting to buy an ipod[815] from him. According to Debbie McInerney, a 42-year-old IT administrator from Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, she paid £147 for an iPod which never turned up[816]. He is reputed to have negative buyer reviews in his ebay account[817].

Follow ups

Users have created caricatures of Amir

A follow up blog [818] featuring news clippings and visitor photoshoped caricatures of Amir was created by a UK user known as <code>media_lush</code> on May 31 2006.

An investigation has been started by Barnet Police regarding a claim of 'improper use of public electronic communications network' against the blog website [819]