When an emails source IP address is pinged (or had a reverse lookup), is it country specific?

I did a reverse IP address lookup on an email received from a “lost family member”(he says he’s in Costa Rica, but we believe he’s in Chicago or thereabouts). When I did the reverse lookup of a recent email, it pointed to Illinois as the email servers source. Is there any possibility that this email could have come from Costa Rica, even though the reverse search showed Illinois as the source email server site? Or is the IP address reverse lookup country specific?

I used www.IP2location.com

Hope this makes sense?
Is the reverse lookup country specific?

2 Responses to When an emails source IP address is pinged (or had a reverse lookup), is it country specific?
  1. fragle2c
    March 14, 2010 | 1:15 am

    an IP is modem specific
    and can be traced to yhe hose or apartment with the right tools

  2. Miha L
    March 14, 2010 | 2:02 am

    Try it with email tracers on:

    http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/email-tracking/email-header.php
    http://www.find-ip-address.org/email-search/find-email.php

    Just enter email header from received email and you will get all information’s about email sender.