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The patlive.com service does seem to be the obvious place to track down who their lawbreaking client is. It's a US company, which was probably a mistake. I assume "Will" could have contracted with a service outside the US.

On the plus side, patlive.com charges $1/minute as their cheapest plan. Robodialing them back, with a sufficiently clever script, would be costly for "Will".

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I looked at PatLive's FAQ and there's no contract required. You pay by Visa, MC, or AMEX. If you can use a reloadable card then they probably don't know who you are.

Since the patlive service and all those 'answering services' that you get are basically faciliating a scam, I'm sure a serious prosecutor could get a court order telling them to pass the information on that they had about the underlying person.

If it was a reloadable card, you can still figure it out with more effort. You threaten to sue them into oblivion as facilitating criminal actions, and you get them to get you on a real phone number with the scammer, and then you track them down that way. You just have to try harder.

A reporter could pursue this by getting a job with that firm and tracking backwards.

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