What happens if you catch a hacker and must deal with the FBI?

After writing an article about a Department of Justice report, stating the FBI focuses on catching kiddie porn perps and many agents lack the know-how to work on national security issues, I was contacted by a man who says he's worked with the FBI to catch hackers. You might be surprised at how hard it can be for an IT professional to work with the FBI on a hacker case. This is one IT professional's story. His name is Scott Johnson and this particular story recounts his third time catching a hacker.

For starters, if you work with the FBI, Johnson says don't expect to get any credit or a public thank you. This case involved a man who hacked into his neighbor's Wi-Fi and attempted to frame his neighbor, a lawyer, by e-mailing child porn to the neighbor's co-workers as well as sending threats to elected officials.

Johnson, a private IT contractor with over 30 years experience, recounts:  "In the beginning of the case I was hired by the neighbor's law firm to find out if he [the innocent neighbor] was the one to blame. There had been a couple of emails sent out at this point and if he had flipped out, the law firm wanted to cut ties with him as fast as possible. I was able to quickly prove that it was not likely the partner in the law firm sending the emails.  I also saw that whomever was doing this was also making some fairly big mistakes. If they continued down this path I would have a good chance to catch them. We also had a great honey pot at this time since the hacker felt comfortable using this connection to send the emails."