When they seized the assets, wouldn’t that include the boat he was on? I think he’d be better off going to Brazil and fathering a child with some local hottie. (I believe that bars extradition, and we’re talking white collar criminal here anyway)
Does anyone else remember Robert Vesco? He was an American financier who stole millions of dollars from investors he defrauded. I first heard of him during the 1980s when he was staying free of extradition in Cuba. But the Wikipedia article says he stayed in various Caribbean countries, including Antigua. He even tried to buy an island from Antigua to make his own country.
The scenario just isn’t realistic. The only people who need to be super worried about extradition are people who committed serious crimes, typically terrorist type crimes.
In at least one or two cases I’m aware of the U.S. has intentionally lured people to the high seas from non-extradition countries. So if you’re really worried the U.S. government is after you, pretty much the worst thing you could do is be out on the high seas–out on the high seas, as an American citizen criminal fugitive, they have essentially unlimited right to seize and arrest you. No mercenary force on a yacht will have any hope of resisting a naval detachment from the United States, and I suspect any mercenary force wouldn’t be willing to die trying.
If you’re a super high value target, history has shown you can be found and taken care of in the most inhospitable, remote, secretive places on earth.
The reality is though, a white collar criminal doesn’t need to do all this. There are a few reasons:
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For many of them, the government just doesn’t care enough. Several moderately well known rich people who have run afoul of the U.S. tax code have lived fairly openly overseas. Not just in non-extradition countries but often traveling all over the place with no real concern for being arrested. This is mainly because no one was seriously trying to arrest them. Sure, if they tried to reenter the U.S. and go through with a passport they would probably get flagged and arrested, but that’d be monumentally stupid.
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Lots of first world countries (not just third world hell holes) have white collar crime legislation different from the United States. Mark Rich was able to live in Switzerland because tax evasion wasn’t a criminal offense in Switzerland (it was a civil offense.) In most extradition treaties there is no obligation to extradite someone for something that isn’t a crime in your country. (So if we have an extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, we would not be required to extradite a woman to SA for stoning for driving a car or something.)
There’s absolutely no realistic reason you’d have to create some super yacht. L. Ron Hubbard created his flotilla because he wanted to, he had no real reason to do it and could have easily avoided any problems living in a decent number of first world countries as long as he didn’t stir up trouble (which he wasn’t good at not doing.)
We need to be clear about the question being asked.
Of course it is sometimes possible, by various techniques, to evade the authorities. The simplest way is simply obscurity–you move some place, and change your name, and nobody realizes that Miguel Sanchez is actually Lionel Hutz who is wanted back in the Estados Unidos. And you can bribe people, or be under the protection of some local dictator, or live in a cabin in the woods, or what have you. Or you could be wanted for some unimportant charge, and even though they know where you are, they just ignore you because you’re not worth the trouble to bring back.
But that isn’t what we’re talking about.
The specific question is, could a wanted criminal live openly on the high seas in international waters? That is, get on a boat, anchor yourself outside the territorial waters of the United States, then hold a press conference and show everybody your suitcases full of stolen millions, and tell everyone that you’ve found the loophole, and they coppers can’t touch you.
And the answer is no. The coppers can simply take a boat out to where you are and arrest you and bring you back in custody. The only reason you need extradition to send the cops to arrest someone in another country is that the other country will object. You could arrest the guy with no problems as far as American law is concerned, it’s just that the other country won’t let you, because they have their own laws and will raise a stink if you do. So instead, you ask them to arrest the guy.
But if the wanted criminal is in international waters, that means there are no conflicts with the sovereignty of any other country, and so you can just go out there and arrest the guy with no problem. The US Coast Guard arrests people in international waters all day every day. From the Coast Guard website at http://www.uscg.mil/d8/enforcement/:
Your hypothetical master criminal will simply be arrested by the coast guard, even though he is in international waters, just like the coast guard can arrest drug smugglers in international waters. And when his lawyer complains he was arrested improperly, the judge will laugh at him.
The sky’s the limit. 
It depends upon the circumstances. As I’ve mentioned, L. Ron Hubbard lived at sea for decades. He and his people were wanted for various actions, and I believe they were even convicted in absentia for some things. But they stayed free and unfettered abouard his fleet of ships at sea (and at harbor in various countries). No one wanted the expense and hassle and possibly the publicity of going after him.
What happens to a ship with no flag, or the flag of an imaginary nation state?
Then the U.S. Navy can stop and board you with no worries about annoying even the tinest, most insignificant country.
Right, and if you read my post I said he “didn’t need to.” The U.S. government wasn’t interested in hunting him down, if they had been, they would have. I’m sure his general kookiness explains why he did it, but he didn’t do it because it was the only way he could remain free. To be honest he probably would have been more comfortable just moving to another country, except scientologists are less tolerated in most of the first world outside of the U.S. than they are in the U.S.
Yeah, but
1.) That’s not exactly the point of the OP – they asked if he could. Hubbard showed that you could, indeed, live in such a fashion
2.) How do you know that “he didn’t need tp?” Considering that Hubbard had judgments against him, he didn’t want to live in those countries where he was wanted. Living on the seas kept him out of anyplace where he could be easily extradited. Some governments would certainly have liked getting their handss on him, but evidently didn’t want the hassle.
Also note, by the way, that when he came back into the US, he snuck in. He was here illegally.
3.) I agre that his hoice of living at sea was probably a preferance. Hubbard was a sea-lover long before Dianetics. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have other advantages, too.
One of Hubbard’s big problems is over time it probably did become somewhat more convenient to live at sea, but that’s because his behavior in various countries in Europe and elsewhere lead to him being a wanted man in a lot more first world countries than just the United States.
But considering he was mostly wanted for things like fraud and etc, it’s unlikely he would be significantly pursued. Hubbard was essentially behaving as a scofflaw though, which tends to well, piss the law off. So if any state had ever been serious about getting him it most likely would have been on general principle because he was continually thumbing his nose at various powerful states.
Hubbard often spoke of how he could never stop moving because of the powerful forces that were after him, but the truth of the matter is the high seas is a very valid and easy place for a power like the United States (or even France, from whom he was also a fugitive) to make an arrest. The fact that they never seized him out of his flotilla mostly shows the governments in question just weren’t willing to go through all that trouble. On the off chance they resisted with violence you could end up with a few dozen dead people on the high seas which may have made things look bad for whatever government was involved.
I don’t contest that you could live like that. But the OP’s scenario is about some white collar criminal, the simple truth is they would not need to live like that to evade extradition. That’s for an “ordinary” white collar criminal like Mark Rich. Someone like Bernie Madoff? Well, he was such a villain in the public mind I’m not sure the U.S. government wouldn’t go after him. And if they are really serious about going after you probably the only way you can stop it is to get sanctuary in a first world country that has strong relationships with the United States (France, UK, etc.) Because the U.S. will be least likely to piss them off, and almost certainly wouldn’t do anything overtly. (They might try tricks like luring you out of that country’s territory, though.)
The problem with that approach is aside for a small criteria of crimes, France and the UK are typically more than happy to extradite criminals fleeing felony charges back to the U.S., assuming they aren’t potentially going to be sentenced to death and aren’t citizens of the extraditing country.
I’ve learned a lot in this thread–thanks, all!
Good chance of it; but isn’t that a bit of an overstatement? The Unabomber and the Weather Underground were never “caught” as I would define it (the former got turned in and the latter turned themselves in). And they didn’t have the kind of financial resources our billionaire criminal has.
Speaking of the Unabomber: what if instead of a bunker, he brought blindfolded construction workers out to somewhere super deep in the wildnerness (Alaska, maybe) and had them build a complex of homes built into hillsides with camouflage and dense forest canopy over them? Is there really no way our guy can put his billions to use to save his ass when the heat is on?
Aha, Cuba makes sense because as long as you can get along with them you KNOW they aren’t going to cooperate with the U.S. North Korea or Iran might also work for the same reason. My question though would be: why wouldn’t an outlaw country like this just take the guy’s money? What’s he going to do about it? Was Castro willing to not stab this guy in the back because he wanted to establish a precedent for other rich fugitives to follow?
Sure he can spend his billions trying to build underground layers with blindfolded contruction workers. Or he can spend considerably less money and call much less attention to himself and bribe local officials to turn a blind eye. Or get high priced lawyers to fight it out and delay the matter for years. The Unabomber was i) caught and ii) lived hidden and out of sight in very little comfort and iii) was not that much of a priority.
There was an episode of The Simpsons that featured just this scenario, Homer and Mr Burns fly to Cuba with a billion dollars and seek asylum from Fidel.
Fidel:Can I see the money?
Homer:Sure!
…
Homer:Can we have our money back now?
Fidel:What money?
For some definitions of “caught”. He succeeded in getting prominent newspapers to publish his manifesto, his brother read it and recognised his writing and turned him in. Not a lot of fancy legwork from the FBI there.
Ha, nice! You’re right, just my scenario 
I’d hate to be in that union.
Unless he was personally going to transport the construction workers, construction equipment, and construction supplies out into the wilderness, the drivers would know where the place was.
In any case, once he caught bird flu, got cancer, had heart problems, had an infected wound, etc, he would have to come out of the wilderness to seek medical attention or die alone in his hideaway.
He could rotate the drivers regularly so that they only saw bits of the route and lost track of where they were (would help if they were not from Alaska). To the second part I say: sounds like we need a well stocked, well staffed clinic in the compound!
Okay, something came up and I’ll not be able to check this thread again for a week or so. Talk amongst yourselves.
It’s true that the most common way the cops catch wanted criminals is that they make a traffic stop, run the guy’s license and registration, and find out he has warrants against him.
If you’re wanted by the cops and don’t want to go to jail, a simple technique that works pretty well is to simply move to another state, pay for everything in cash, and don’t get pulled over by the cops ever.
Building a fortress in the wilderness makes you MORE conspicuous, because a fortress isn’t a bunch of trees, and therefore stands out among a bunch of trees. If you want to be inconspicuous, build your fortress to look like a regular building, and then hide in amongst a bunch of other buildings. And you can hide the movements of your henchmen and suppliers and cronies among the normal traffic of the city.
As you go through your daily life, exactly how often do you have to hide your identity from the cops? Usually the only interaction you have with the cops is getting pulled over for speeding once or twice a decade, right?
Your hypothetical billionaire fugitive’s best method of staying away from the cops is simply obscurity. They don’t know where he is, and he doesn’t stick out from everyone else, so how the heck do they find him? The other way that people are found is that they have associates and family members, and they stay in touch with them, and when Lex Luthor calls his mom on her birthday, she tells the cops. Or Lex Luthor’s minion gets arrested for this and that, and decides to cut a deal with the cops.
Living in a wilderness or high seas fortress is the opposite of this idea.