Right, that’s how Whitey Bulger hid for years in far away and exotic…California. He paid for everything in cash and didn’t have a driver’s license. If you never drive and only take cabs (as he did) that eliminates probably the single most common way wanted people get caught (traffic stops.) Paying for everything with cash eliminates most of the other means of easily catching you, so at that point it’s basically whether or not someone rats you out or if you’re notorious, the small chance someone recognizes you and informs the police.
The last two posts make a lot of sense, although I’d think you could only live so large this way. Still, look at how long OBL lasted (along with being an infamous terrorist, he was very wealthy as I understand it) in a similar fashion. If you’re a little less infamous, that probably works basically forever (although then you won’t have the advantage of fanatical followers, and so will have to pay everyone without ever getting ratted out to the IRS or anything).
But I’m still intrigued by the idea of a billionaire who wanted to essentially thumb his nose at the authorities, rather than scurry around like a mouse. So I thought of another idea:
What if you buried your compound (bunker) so deeply into the ground, it literally took billions of dollars to dig your way in that deep…and then, once inside, you set off explosive charges to seal it off from the outside world? Obviously the thing would have to be like a space station down there, utterly self sufficient even including air and of course massive stockpiles of food and fuel; but I’ve got to think that with enough money and a limited number of inhabitants, that part would be doable. (And sure, you’d never be able to leave; but we’re talking about someone who is looking at life in prison if they did leave, so who cares?)
The question is, would the FBI really spend what it would take to go in after you, if you’re only a white collar criminal? Seems doubtful to me.
I think the thing to do, to make this stick, would be to become a citizen of another country (and, if possible, give up your US citizenship). A surprising number of countries will give you citizenship if you park enough money there. And it need not be a huge amount of money; I have a friend who is apparently a Vincentian citizen because she bought a house there.
The problem is finding one who won’t give in to USA pressure to extradite. As for renouncing citizenship you would have to do it before you were wanted, afterward you’d be insane to step foot on a US embassy.
If anything happens, you’re trapped under tons of earth, too. So if your tooth breaks or you have an infected appendix, what do you do then? Do you take a doctor down there, along with some playboy girls to keep you company? But after 2 years with no escape, you’re probably closer to Sartre’s “The hell are the others” than to paradise (there’s a reason that scientists put volunteers in mock-up space stations in Russia to study how to keep people mentally healthy if they’re in close quarters for years. It didn’t always work out in Antarctica, where some people went rather beserk - and that was only about 6 months.)
As for “how much trouble would the FBI go to” - the FBI was always a highly political organisation when deciding which crimes to pursue, they went for the public-press cases, not the ones with dangerous criminals or chances of success. So if you just embezzled some money, you might be safe, but if you ate a baby on camera or burned a kitten, they will hunt you to the ends of the earth. And don’t steal from the rich- they can pay private hunters to follow you; steal from the middle-class.
Indeed. <g>
Closer to that than you would be in prison, though?
Why do you think that citizens of another country can’t be prosecuted by the United States? If you’re a citizen of the Cayman Islands, and commit a crime in America, we can arrest you and try you. If you flee to the Cayman Islands, we’ll extradite you. And the Cayman Islands will hand you over.
There are a few countries in the world that might not hand you over. Cuba, say. But all these places are not very nice places. Like, say you have a billion dollars in cash, and flee to Cuba. You can use your billion dollars to buy the friendship of the local authorities, right? Except, why can’t they just send in some soldiers, arrest you, throw you in jail, and take the billion dollars for themselves? A guy with a billion dollars in his wallet is a pretty tempting target for a mugging.
Good question, Lemur. The only reason I can think of is so as not to discourage other billionaire fugitives from coming and doing the same thing.
Mr. Burns would tell you it’s even worse if you have a trillion dollars: The Trouble with Trillions - Wikipedia
I’ll echo this. Vesco is the poster child of someone who lived on a huge yacht with impunity on the high seas. There were rumors, I don’t know if they were confirmed, that he had rockets on the yacht to defend it.
If you look up “total sleezebag” in the dictionary you will see Vesco’s picture.
In the recent SEAL action movie Act of Valor (terrible acting by the SEALs themselves, but great combat scenes),
a billionaire foreign bad guy “retired” from crime and took to the high seas in a megayacht guarded by two speedboats and lots o’ armed mooks. The U.S. Navy captured him in about five minutes. Granted, in real life, it might be harder, but I don’t think the end result would be any different.
Ah-haha! Anything signed outside of the US, even by the US, is not valid in the US. There was an episode on American Greed or some other show with the exact same situation. the guy was in the UK, and the US promised to not seek the death penalty if the UK extradited him. That deal did not hold up in Federal court.
Well, what about a situation where it’s impossible for the cops to actually arrest you without killing you? (and the crime you are accused of is not murder or a violent crime)
For example, if you decided to live in a submarine or undersea habitat, down too deep for scuba divers, it would be almost impossible for the authorities to actually board your vessel without flooding it and killing you and possibly the cops as well.
Now, granted, this is only a hypothetical : submarines require incredible amounts of maintenance, so being able to flout the law for years sounds impractical.
But, it sounds like you could hold a press conference and announce your position and they would have no way to arrest you. The moment you detect the cop boats on sonar you cruise away.
Of course, since even a billionaire would have trouble getting his hands on fissionable materials with no questions asked, a realistic submarine would have limited endurance and they could just ask whatever country you buy fuel and supplies from to detain you.
The same argument applies to an airship or airplane. It’s at least imaginable that in theory someone could live in a hydrogen-filled airship at high altitudes (above the storms)
The reason for hydrogen is that you could create more lift gas as it leaks through the envelope by electrolyzing water. The power would come from solar fabric on the top. If you were flying above 10,000 feet, it sounds like it would be almost impossible for the authorities to board your craft safely in a way that didn’t endanger their lives.
Again, they could shoot down the aircraft, but if your only crime is financial…
Isn’t that what L. Ron Hubbard essentially did for most of the 1970s?
Where to begin? First of all, it probably could work FOR A WHILE. You don’t need to sail your mega-yacht into any port to re-victual it. You send in a smaller boat for that. You can refuel the same way. And if you have the mean$$$, you don’t have to have a mega-yacht that looks like one. You could probably fit out a tanker, freighter, or container ship with every luxury one can think of. Think outside of the box. Think like a James Bond Villain.
Next, if you’ve got the moola to consider something like this, you’ve probably got the knowledge or means to hire the knowledge to launder the money like anything through all sorts of different overseas banks and even some US ones. People always talk about the secrecy, privacy, and security of Swiss banks. Other countries have banking laws that make Swiss laws seem like posting your personal information and photograph on billboard all over the country. Well, maybe just county, but still…
And, if you’ve got the money to do this sort of stuff, I’m pretty sure you have enough money to bribe some government official somewhere enough to get issued a genuine legitimate passport from another country with a new name on it. And you can buy the boat under that false name too. Or probably some sort of corporation.
I still think it’d be a lot easier, once you’ve hidden the money and set up a good false identity, is to just buy a nice, yet modest, house somewhere and live a quiet discrete life.
I like the way you think!
I think the only way this scheme could work is if you set up a shell oil company, build a few oil rigs and convert one of them to a luxury mansion
you have excuses for bringing in food, supplies, helicopters and hookers along with modest money laundering for the rest of your family rolled up into one nice package
double post oops
It would be much cheaper to buy citizenship in a country that would refuse to extradite him.
As for the object of the exercise, if there is a sufficiently large reward for him, it would be worth while to kidnap him. When Brazil had balky extradition treaties with the US, it was quite common for American fugitives to be simply kidnapped in Brazil and flown to the US in a rented executive jet.
Where do you get the water to electrolyze? I’m not immediately persuaded that harvesting water vapor from the clouds is a particularly trivial feat of engineering.
Not without making your airship impracticably large.