The person who convinced a guest to pitch a television through the window of an Edgewater Hotel room back in March could be a Windsor, Ont. man who calls himself "Dex" in cyberspace.

According to a story published Tuesday by the online investigative news site The Smoking Gun, Dex, a.k.a. Tariq Malik, an unemployed 25-year-old living with his mother, is the ringleader of a "network of so-called pranksters who have spent a year engaged in an orgy of criminal activity."

Known as Pranknet and congregating in online chat rooms, The Smoking Gun story attributes a slew of crank telephone calls made by the group to hotels and restaurants across the United States, most resulting in humiliation and thousands of dollars in damage.

Among Pranknet's stunts, unwitting accomplices at the other end of the telephone mayhem were talked into releasing fire suppression systems in restaurants, stripping naked in public and, in several cases, tossing appliances through hotel windows - eerily similar to circumstances surrounding the incident in Whitehorse.

While the Edgewater Hotel appears to be the only Canadian business that has suffered at the hands of Malik and his cohorts, Andrew Goldberg, managing editor of The Smoking Gun, said the coincidence is difficult to ignore.

"It matches up perfectly with many of the other incidents that have taken place in the U.S. and it seems it would be a little too early in the process to be a copy cat," Goldberg told the Star.

"How they ended up in Whitehorse? That's a good question. It's not the only Edgewater (Hotel) that exists."

A quick Internet search reveals an Edgewater Hotel in Seattle; interestingly, in the same Pacific time zone as the Yukon.

Goldberg, who contributed to the story, said compiling Pranknet's exploits involved tracking media reports of occurrences that matched its modis operandi.

"Every time we heard about one of these things that fit the mold, we would investigate, nail it down to at least this group of people," he said.

While The Smoking Gun is not sure Malik is behind the Whitehorse prank, it is certain he was in on a Feb. 10 call to a Best Western Hotel guest in Shillington, PA.

That evening, Malik and and an accomplice played the roles of supervisor and hotel employee and together duped a male guest into believing there was a gas leak in the hotel.

The guest went on to smash his hotel window with a chair "to get the air flowing" before disabling the television's "dangerous" electric charge by bashing in the set with the ceramic toilet tank lid.

Six weeks later, at the Edgewater Hotel, the same prank resulted in a similar outcome.

Despite the new information, Whitehorse RCMP Sgt. Don Rogers said today it's unlikely the culprit would be brought to justice in the Yukon.

"From my understanding, we're not (continuing the investigation)," Rogers said. "The cost of returning one person to the territory (to face a mischief charge) would be so extravagant, from my perspective, it certainly wouldn't be feasible.

"I would think that if he's creating that much havoc (in the United States), the U.S. prosecutors would be taking some action," added Rogers.

Goldberg said The Smoking Gun, which found Malik and staked out his Windsor residence via the prankster's IP address, will continue to follow the story, but that the ball is in the court of U.S. authorities to decide if charges will be laid.

Calls to the Edgewater Hotel were not returned as of press time this afternoon.