It was mafia boss Pasquale “Scarface” Manfredi’s “love of Facebook” that led to his arrest a few weeks ago.

“Social Networks, Criminal Networks?” describes the story of the Italian gangster, charged in over 20 crimes and a number of killings, who was traced to his hideout from a log-on to the popular social networking site. Moreover, the Justice Department now trolls sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, looking for clues criminals may inadvertently drop. It’s worked: in 2007 a man was arrested after putting “rest in peace” pictures of a man on MySpace – before the man was reported dead. Graffiti artist Cyrus “Buket” Yazdani gained such a huge following from his “tagging” feats on YouTube that it drew the attention of the authorities (as well as thousands of fans). And lastly, a man wanted for drunk driving plainly listed his city of residence on Facebook and MySpace. Police quickly tracked him down and arrested him.

The SSN Take: What’s worse than being a criminal? Bragging about it on the Internet.

Samuel Hartman, March 27, 2010

Note: Post was not sponsored.