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Chicago Man Among Thousands Searching Website Images For Missing Plane

By John Dodge

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Chicago man using a satellite crowd-sourcing tool initially thought he may have found a lead on the location of the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet.

It turned out to be unfounded, but it illustrates the trend of using the public and the Internet to help hunt down information.

Mike Seberger on Sunday logged onto a website called Tomnod, which is being used by the public to help find the missing airliner. He said he quickly located a satellite image that could be a jet plane.

Users of the Tomnod site volunteer to view detailed satellite images to find a particular object.

He submitted his find to the CNN iReport page with the image.

He told CNN that the image appears to be similar in shape and scale to an airliner, but it was most likely a boat.

He also said that he wasn't sure of the exact location of the satellite image, but flagged it for others to confirm.

Reached by CBS, Seberger politely declined an interview, saying in an email: "I have seen some subsequent photos that more strongly indicate my original one was a couple of boats - which is indicated in my iReport as being more likely - though partially obscured by clouds (and scale matching a 777-200).

"With that said, I think the focus should be put on finding the actual plane, and not on my pic from yesterday."

According to his LinkedIn profile, Seberger works in Chicago for Insight Global, an IT staffing and recruiting company.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished early Saturday with 239 people on board during a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

Images released Wednesday from Chinese satellites could be wreckage from the plane and the images are from near the flight's original flight path.

CBS 2 has learned that two former Chicago residents were on board the plane Muktesh Mukherjee and his wife Xiaomo Bai. They lived in Chicago from 2005 to 2008. Their two sons were born here.

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