> I am offering to back up to 160 gigs to another hard drive. There is only about 240 gigs worth of information. I see that you have backed up most everything using time machine. If there is anything smaller like 4, 8, or 10 gigs worth I can do that faster to DVDs or flash drives. I would have to buy another hard drive to get you the 160 gigs. Which i would if you need the info.
This combined with the supposed very quick rapid sale of the laptop has me suspicious - I would bet it's the original thief emailing you. Since he mentions time machine right away and found your email quickly - this is a computer sophisticated person, who possibly has done this before. "Berating me for my actions is useless" is also well written English. This is not a run of the mill stupid person. You're likely dealing with someone intelligent with very bad intentions.
I'd be scared now if running into another scam - I'm guessing, again I'm not in LE, but I'm guessing that the offer to buy a hard drive and back up for you will ask of you cash to be sent to a Paypal or Western Union or something, that you'll never see again, nor your data.
> what would you do?
First, pause and reflect. You don't need to hurry, it's more important you don't do anything stupid.
Second, get law enforcement involved. Now, I had my car window smashed once and had a bunch of stuff grabbed when I lived in a bad neighborhood, they took my stereo and cigarettes. Police are good people, but they tend to realize there's not much they can do about something like this, and they have limited resources. So, think about how to approach the police to get them interested - maybe talk to a computer crimes person online who would be interested in helping out, and get all the information you can. If this is a scam or a common thing (again, my intuition says so), then the police will be a lot more interested. Maybe you can put a sting together and get your computer back and/or put this bastard in jail.
I think your next two steps should be contacting people online who deal with this sort of thing, and contacting local law enforcement. Maybe the FBI would be interested actually, if you find the right agent and ask if this looks like a pattern/regular thing. Police love to catch and lock up repeat offenders, especially sophisticated ones.
Contact a lot of people - people tend to be sympathetic to when crime happens, and hate criminals. Whatever you do, don't contact this person on your own before consulting experts on the matter and law enforcement. It puts you in harm's way. Whatever you do, don't meet them or send any money or resources before contacting experts and law enforcement. Good luck and sorry this happened to you.