When I was doing that type of work, we would frequently remind the easily exciteable crowd (supervisors) that "You can't put cuffs on a keyboard; so you need to put a body at the keyboard at the time the crime was committed."

There are ways of doing it without actually catching people in the act, but it requires quite a bit of good investigation coupled with good forensic work. It certainly doesn't work the same way in real life the way it does on CSI or NCIS

Glad to hear it turned out well for you.