The answer to most criminals’ quandaries back in the day was “Mexico”. It was mostly a cash economy happy to accept US dollars and no interest on the part of individuals (and little interest on the part of the Mexican government) in aiding US law enforcement or banks. Nobody was going to ask where your money came from.
The Treasury. As bills get worn out they are returned and destroyed, before that their serial numbers are carefully registered. None of the Cooper Money has ever made it thru those channels, and if it was spent, some certainly would,
Right.
When slated for destruction, all the numbers are carefully checked.
Sure. But someday those 20’s in circulation will come back to the USA, and none have.
Cooper never spent any significant amount of that money. Period.
And before e-scanning the bills were laboriously counted and entered by hand.
Stealing bills meant for destruction occurred once, quite some times ago, IIRC.
Because he probably didn’t survive the jump. The OP’s question was “what would Cooper have done with the money had he survived the jump?”
He could have survived- doubtful but maybe. Maybe he lost the briefcase on the way down.
Failing that, he could have buried the cash, hoping the search will die down, and perhaps after reading newspaper accounts, he realized he couldnt spend much.
And FYI- it never has DB Cooper it was Dan Cooper.
We should probably keep the discussion to just the money laundering issue. Anything about the actual fate of Cooper is an unnecessary hijack.
Well, it would likely not be “money laundering” since that is depositing small amounts into a bank, etc (Placement)- moving it from account to account- and different types (Layering) then spending- (Integration).
The cash would best just be spent on modest cash purchases- you could easily buy a nice used car for a couple thou. Buy groceries, Gamble at a casino (a good way to launder, if you dont lose much), etc etc. Dont spend it in one area. Dont spend any in that area at all. Go on a vacay to Mexico or Canada.
Or hell retire to Belize or Costa Rica.
They wouldnt catch up with him if he was careful. Once in a while, one of the bills would be spotted by an eager beaver bank employee, but hopefully by then it had circulated.
And then a decade+ later the bills would start trickling back to be destroyed.
None of that sounds careful at all. Sounds like a quick way to get detected.
Ransom money doesn’t get marked/recorded for no reason. I would think the receiver would want to exchange all of it for clean bills all at once. A little bit here and there seems like a sure way to get caught.
Finding someone willing to do that, unless you are already in a criminal gang, etc is quite dangerous and doubtful. The FBI does stings on that sort of stuff, dark web, etc.
And then what does the money launderer do with it?
Well this is part of my question. I’m a LEO and I don’t have a clue what criminals do with ransom money that is for sure marked or recorded. It seems like a losing move for the bad guy no matter what he does.
Does anybody know how often money tracing is what cracks a heist or ransom case? The only high profile one I know of is the Lindbergh kidnapping. I suspect it is more effective at getting a conviction than actually tracking someone down.
That is actually an interesting idea. What would have happened in a typical casino in the 70s (doesn’t have to be Vegas) if someone came in, bought a big pile of chips for several thousand dollars, spent some time in the casino having drinks, maybe played and lost a bit and then walked back to the cashier to exchange the remaining 90% back for cash?
It seems so easy that I suspect there is a flaw in my idea, but what is it?
I don’t see a flaw, except that in Cooper’s day, pretty much the only place that had casinos was Nevada. Assuming he got there, though, he would do well to follow your plan.
But he would need to keep things reasonable. Buying a large amount of chips (say, $10,000) at a $5 blackjack table would likely attract some attention, especially if he only played a couple of hands. But buying $500 worth of chips at a $25 table probably wouldn’t. It would take some time, and maybe he’d lose a little (or win a little), but it sounds like a good plan.
Probably nothing unless there was a recent high profile caper and publicized appeal to the public to look out for those bills, as was likely the case after Cooper got away.
Wouldn’t a casino be a big risk for having cameras everywhere if any bills could be traced to them?
Nevermind
Sorry - I’m not able to see every post.
I thought better of it - sorry
1971 would have been really early days for that tech. They had CCTV that was monitored by a person, but systems that recorded, timestamped, and saved footage were rare and cumbersome.
And data storage was expensive. Systems that used tape rarely saved it for long before it got recorded over.
I agree with your thoughts that modern money tracing makes it very hard to safely spend a big haul of hot bills. Whether that’s just bills with recorded serial numbers or bills somehow physically marked.
Back in 1971 or 1951 or 1931 it would have been far easier for the crooks and far harder for the good guys.