A while ago Anonymous hacked one of those forums and published the usernames and hashes. Apparently a lot of them where using the same usernames and passwords in another porn-related forums in the "lit" web.
Don't know if it resulted in someone being caught by the police or not, but definitely subtler methods such as statistical analysis of writing style are not the only way to get a lead from those forums.
I urge caution against amateur investigations, but it'd be interesting to see what software tools could be written to help law enforcement do a better job.
Just be careful, if you get too god at this it might be used for things you don't agree with. This is an area that I would steer completely clear of, the same way I'd never help develop chemical or biological weapons.
Are you saying that working with a very skilled person is worth sacrificing your ethical integrity? I would not hesitate for a second to deny working on things I consider against my personal beliefs even if there was both money and fame at stake.
To use the good old reductio ad absurdum, would you be willing to kill a random stranger if it meant you would get to work with Albert Einstein?
Don't know if it resulted in someone being caught by the police or not, but definitely subtler methods such as statistical analysis of writing style are not the only way to get a lead from those forums.