Catch Me If You Can

On the advice of Michael Gunnison, an assistant U.S. attorney in Concord, New Hampshire, Higgins decided to take a small slice out of the bigger pie and focus on one crime for which they could arrest Nelson. They didn't necessarily think that they could keep him in jail -- but they wanted a judge to impose pretrial conditions that would stop him from running auctions.

The small slice that Higgins and Gunnison focused on was an auction from August 2000 in which Nelson interacted with a customer who'd won a Yahoo auction and expected to pay Nelson for a 32-megabyte RAM card for his laptop. Nelson took the customer's credit-card number to consummate the transaction. (He had no ability to process a credit-card payment, however.) Nelson never sent the RAM, but over the next two months, he used the customer's Visa number to establish an America Online account -- which he later used to conduct other fraudulent auctions -- and to set up monthly subscriptions to several porn Web sites.

The next time that Higgins knocked on Nelson's door, in January 2001, he didn't bring the whole posse. He arrived with just one other postal inspector in tow and a warrant for Nelson's arrest in connection with a single charge of wire fraud, for the unauthorized use of the credit card. Nelson answered the door in his bathrobe. Higgins allowed him to dress before packing him into a car for the hour-long trip to the federal courthouse in Concord. Though Nelson was cuffed in the back of the car, Higgins let him read the arrest warrant. They made small talk. "He seemed like an affable enough guy," Higgins says.

They arrived in Concord just before noon. The U.S. Marshal's Service took custody of Nelson, though Higgins did Nelson's fingerprints and mug shots. In the afternoon, Nelson made his appearance before the federal magistrate, James Muirhead. Muirhead listened to Gunnison describe the ongoing investigation Higgins was working on. Then he heard from Nelson, who sounded contrite, promised to get a job, and mentioned that his wife was pregnant. Muirhead released Nelson and told him to return to Concord for his arraignment in a few weeks. There were also pretrial conditions, as Higgins and Gunnison had hoped for: Nelson had to stay in New Hampshire and "refrain from any use of computers."

A grand jury indicted Nelson on one count of wire fraud on February 7. Nelson found out about the indictment by watching the 11 o'clock news. "We didn't sleep much that night," he says. Nelson was required to appear in Concord again for his arraignment on February 15. He feared that they'd keep him in jail until the trial -- and he was convinced that he would wind up serving a long prison term.

On the 14th, Krista called her husband's pretrial service officer to inform him that Jay had disappeared in the Cherokee and had left a note. On the 15th, no one knew where Nelson had gone. "We were looking at a potential flight situation," Gunnison says. Few expected Nelson to show up in court.

And he didn't. He was now officially a fugitive, and it was the responsibility of the U.S. Marshals to find him. Higgins kept working the case too.

A cold feeling inside

On the US Airways flight, Nelson brought his newest computer with him, a Toshiba laptop that he'd bought at a Best Buy in Concord on February 2, three days after agreeing in front of the magistrate to refrain from any use of computers.

Nelson connected through Pittsburgh and landed someplace warm. He took a taxi to the motel room he'd reserved, which turned out to be in a seedy neighborhood. "There were hookers and strip clubs and adult bookstores," Nelson says. "The first room I got had a mildewy smell to it. So I went back to the office to change rooms. As I was walking back from the office, I realized what I'd done. I'd just left my wife, walked away from everything. I got this cold feeling inside."

Nelson was paranoid about being caught. "I thought I saw a U.S. marshal behind every rock," he says. But after a while, Nelson convinced himself that he was "a really small fish in a really big pond." Higgins had no idea where Nelson was, and neither did the U.S. Marshals. Krista Nelson's Jeep Cherokee, parked at the airport parking garage, wasn't even found for several months.

Nelson's auctions continued to pop up on eBay and Yahoo, but at that point he seemed mostly focused on eBay. In March and April, he took in almost $8,000 on eBay, spread over 73 different transactions. Then came nearly $20,000 in April and May as "Biggerthanu." Then $27,000 as "Skunkker" in May and June. Nelson was a mass manufacturer of electronic identities.

Higgins decided that if he was going to catch Nelson, he would need to tap into the online-auction community. He began contacting buyers who'd lost money to all of the Nelson scams that he knew about. He asked them to complete a Web-based survey form that he'd designed especially for the case. As information poured in, Higgins sifted through it.