This woman managed to steal 45 million dollars from ING, where she was an employee, before being caught.
She managed to buy huge amounts of jewels and houses. She didn’t escape the law. Would you? What would your plan be? What do you do with the money? Do you run for it?
It actually seems like she did fairly well: she only got 7 years and they didn’t recover all the money…
My first reaction to reading that she bought millions of dollars worth of jewelry was, “Idiot!”.
Then I thought, maybe not - if she’d traveled around the world and stuffed safe deposit boxes with cash and swag, it might have been a good plan. That’s how Whitey Bulger eluded authorities for so long.
Reading further, it seems she actually flaunted the expensive jewelry. I repeat, “Idiot!”
So, a smart crook would have laundered the money smartly. Prescious metals, jewelry, offshore accounts, negotiable securities, assuming it could be done without a paper trail. (I’m definitely not an expert at this, but I’ve read a lot of true crime books.)
Use a little of the stolen cash to pay bills. Avoid the trappings of wealth. Bring your lunch most days - if you want to eat champagne and caviar, do it away from work. This creates the appearance of a frugal person, which can explain high savings should the cops look into your declared holdings.
Make regular, on-the-record, reasonably sized donations to non-controversial charities. This would tend to shake suspicions of investigators who are comparing your profile with other suspected crooks.
At some point, assuming you’ve avoided heat, announce well in advance that you are moving to Europe, the US, or some other developed country (maybe mention an impending marriage). Leave a forwarding address (a PO box).
Then head for some tax haven where they don’t ask questions, after putting a new identity in place.
I await corrections from real experts.
After your 45 mil heist, how would you get away with it?
First thing I’d do is take out a hit on those meddling kids.
I wonder just how good this “new identity” could be. And it’s still spending the rest of your life looking over your shoulder and wondering who’s hunting you and how close they are.
The main characters in Office Space got away with accidentally stealing a huge pile of money when a disgruntled former (kind of) employee set the building on fire in a totally unrelated act of revenge.
I guess the point is that I’d get away with it by hoping someone else drew the attention of the authorities by doing something even more illegal and destructive than I did.
Depends on your needs, expertise and comfort level.
Whitey Bulger would have probably never been caught if he hadn’t moved back to the US. And he was exceptionally disciplined, willing (pretty much) to break all ties, and had around $50 million.
Seven years in the Crowbar Hotel might be easier.
It’s going to be difficult to steal that kind of money and reap the benefits from it. I wouldn’t want to bother unless I could live decent life on the money. So I’d need a place to go where I could live the life of a retired American movie producer. Maybe Italy or Spain. I’d have to get my identity established there long enough before I go missing or the theft is discovered so moving there permanently wouldn’t seem surprising. Of course I’d need passports and other ID under my new name. I’d use a series of identity changes through several countries, and establish bank accounts in each country. I’d never go back and touch them, they’re just red herrings. I might send anonymous instructions to people in those countries to withdraw the money and spend it as they please. Then I’d want to buy a villa and property ahead of time, along with a couple of nice cars. So I’d move money through other bank accounts with false IDs to cover that. I’d take cash out at the end and pay for the property that way. But keeping enough money is the tough part. Best bet is to buy jewelry, lots of it. Not the biggest most expensive pieces, just common items made of gold, emeralds, and diamonds. I’d melt down the gold myself. Ten pounds of 14k gold is worth almost $150,000 now, and I’d want at least $1,000,000 in disposable gold, so I’d have to transport 100 pounds of 14k gold to make sure I net $1 million in the end. I’d need less 24K, so I’d concentrate on that when buying jewelry. The gemstones would be much smaller, and it would be a good idea to accumulate enough to net another $1 million. So I’d cash as much as I could in for good old US dollars to load up in a couple of money belts, transfer anything left in my US account in small amounts to random people, travel to Canada, and take a series of plane rides heading west southwest until reaching Brazil using my first identity switch. I’d travel to Scandanavia using my next identity, and then a different one in each European country I travel through on the way to my villa.
If there is some sort of way to make it seem you only stole a certain amount, when actually you stole much more, then perhaps prison for a few years is a good trade-off. If you want to stay near family and you don’t want a life on the run.
Then again, “life on the run” is kinda part of the game 
So I think the plan of staggering the money through different jewels & accounts, while donating to charities & telling co-workers I’m moving to Europe sounds good. Red herring accounts sound exciting too…
I’d probably just stash it somewhere and live a bit above my means. Out to diner a bit more, more plays/concerts, vacations at nicer places and travel first class (and I have a few more like these). Just don’t buy a big house and fancy car, etc.
Stop there; they don’t have an extradition treaty with US, I believe.
I want them to believe that’s where I stopped. And by southwest I meant traveling all the way around the world to reach there. I’d also have to consider how to get the cash there ahead of time. I don’t want to be carrying $2 million in cash through that many airports. It’s turning into an awful lot of work ahead of time covering tracks and getting a low yield on all that money with the risk of getting caught. I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.
Launder it through the mob. You give them forty-five million dollars and they arrange for you to “win” twenty million at some mob-owned casino. You’ve now aquired twenty million dollars with a legitimate paper trail that you can spend freely.
You’ll be lucky to get 10 cents on the dollar that way. And you haven’t done anything to cover up the theft or your identity. And you certainly don’t want to make it look like the mob stole the money.
Would a country with which there is no extradition treaty also just leave your bank account alone if that’s what you transfered the money too prior to your travels? Or do they somehow not count?
Actually they do.
One country you might consider is Cambodia. No extradition treaty, they use US dollars as their primary currency, and it doesn’t take much to live like a king there. Splash some money around (their police is notoriously corrupt) and you shouldn’t have a problem living a comfortable existence that approximates a Western lifestyle.
The only downside is that you’re stuck in Cambodia. Hope you enjoy hot weather!
can’t imagine what I do. maybe I don’t have the required level of avarice, but I can’t imagine being able to boost that much money and get away with it. When you steal $45, you can just disappear. When you steal $45 million, they will find you, unless they think you’re already dead.
The mob already does this sort of thing. I don’t know their rates but I don’t feel they take a 90% cut. And why would they want to tell anyone they assisted you in a major felony? They’re not going to tell anyone you gave them any money or that you were involved in any crime, so your identity will only be somebody who was a lucky winner at the slot machines. And nobody connects the mob with the stolen money - they have ongoing methods of filtering illegitimate income into normal money without getting any police attention.
Invent a dying relative, and exit stage left.
Take to traveling and tell everyone I was a trust fund baby who inherited wealth, just out for some fun.
Have fun, fun, fun! Don’t go overboard, don’t get into illegal things, keep your head down, and your picture out of the paper.
not true anymore.
"*The younger Scarfo has been charged yet again, in what federal authorities are calling a mob-connected corporate “looting” that allegedly netted him and a dozen associates - including an accountant and a team of lawyers - $12 million between 2007 and 2008.
“The group gave new meaning to the term ‘corporate takeover,’ " New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said yesterday in announcing the unsealing of the 107-page indictment.*”
Makes loansharking look like small potatoes.
The curious might enjoy this book: How to Disappear It’s putatively aimed at evading stalkers and only discusses legal means, but there are more than a few winks to the illegal ones as well. They also spend a lot of time on how to erase your digital footprints, which is fascinating.
The short version is that you should have multiple burner cell phones set to forward calls through each other, call up ALL organizations that have your info on file and ‘correct’ it to something misleading, and then don’t do anything that will result in someone running a credit check on you. Money should be handled through a front corporation and/or cash gift cards. This gets quite a bit easier if you can use a false ID, although they heavily imply that acquiring one is considerably more difficult than it used to be.
I’ve heard that the biggest problem with going on the run is that it’s very, very lonely. Most people get caught when they try to reestablish connections with their loved ones.