Is it possible to ransom 10 Million dollars and get away with the money?

Great Debates
1

How could you ransom 10 million dollars and get away with it? If it was deposited in a bank account what good would that do you? You couldn’t have it transferred anywhere without it being watched and recorded. I can’t see anyway you could electronically receive the money without them finding out who you are.

Would a Swiss bank account work?

The only way I see it working is if the guy asked for some physical asset: Either cash or gold or diamonds and then had a physical pick up. But that is extremely unlikely to be successful also.

NOTE: I don’t think we will be helping the Sniper by discussing this. But please don’t attack me for asking the question.

2

Electronically:

Swiss bank might would work, but IIRC their banking laws would allow something like the ‘sniper ransom’ to be tracked. Transferring to a bank in a hostile country could work, but the country risks being seen as supporting a terrorist. Transferring to a bank in a ‘shady’ country might also work, you’d then jump the money around to several other places before it could be tracked and convert it into cash afterwards.

Physically:
You’d have to make pick-up without being captured, which would be hard. Once you’ve done that, you could try to launder it somewhere in the US, but I imagine you’d be pretty likely to be caught trying that, especially since whatever you get is almost certainly going to be marked. You could also take it out of the country. From looking at drug markets, smuggling something out shouldn’t be that hard, and once out you simply go to some primarily cash/goods based country and live like a king.

I wouldn’t give the person very good odds of getting away with it; if the ransom demand is real, the person is probably simply nuts.

3

It depends on who’s doing the ransoming. If you could frighten a family, say, into not going to the cops, you could get away with a physical drop. That would be safer than a wire transfer.

If the cops are on to you, however, I don’t see how it would be possible to SAFELY get away with the money if the police were competent. Any wire transfer can be traced one way or another, and a physical pickup is easily followed, unless you could do it real fast and confusing a la “Ransom.”

4

Define “Get away”.

Do you mean–“escape with the money”?

Or–“Never be caught & live like a king”?

5

i mean never be caught and live like someone with 10 million dollars

6

Well if 10 million was sitting in an account as available balance he could pull $300 a day from damn near any ATM in the country at any time of day. How much more does he really need. A business licence and some fake books for a cash heavy small business (say freelance computer repair) and he could look like a legit person with a legal tracked $40-$50K a year small business.

7

right…ATM machines…but he would need the ATM card…that would be a physical drop of some sort.

8

I’m pondering a dead drop scenario but an ATM card is pretty damn small and easily concealed. Could even be done as 20 drops (20 identical cards) he could pick up any one of them and change the pin from a payphone later.

9

I wonder if the FBI or anyone can fit a gps locater beacon into an ATM card? And i wonder if the guy has a lead wallet hanging around.

10

what is a dead drop?

11

Dead drops are arranged locations to pick up/drop off items or information without knowing who is picking up or dropping off the item in question.

12

Well, if the guy was a little geeky, which I doubt, all he needs is a card programmer device. Those things can program any plastic card to be a credit card or whatever in the magnetic strip. You can even do it to hotel keys.

Then all he would need from the police is the numbers to program into the magnetic strip.

It would work. He could be withdrawing money from ATM’s all over the world and drive the police crazy.

13

Ok, here’s what’s being reported *by Fox news (about the sniper). Apparantly he has a stolen credit card and wanted the money put on that.

I don’t think that would work…And if it did, it would be easy to track, wouldn’t it?

14

Yeah, it can be done.

Basically you use the technique of money laundering. The money gets deposited into an account attached to the Fed wire system. You set up a whole bunch of accounts all over the world also attached to the Fed wiring system, and you may also make use of accounts in foreign countries held by disreputable individuals with banking connections who let you borrow their account for a percentage.

When everything is ready, you have the money wired into one of your accounts and then immediately upon arrival wire it in seperate accounts into a bunch of the others. As soon as gets into those you wire into a third set, and then a fourth and so on and so on. You can’t stop a paper trail from existing (or an electronic trail,) but what you can do is make one so long and obfuscated and requiring the cooperation of so much bureacracy that it is very difficult and time consuming to follow.

When the trail is long and convoluted enough that it will take a long time or forever to follow, you have all of the assets wired into a single account outside of a cooperative foreign bank in one of several countries. You are waiting at that bank. When the money comes in you make a cash withdrawal, and are gone long before the good guys can catch up to you.

There are some third parties that will do the laundering for you for a fee (50% or so) if you are willing to take a chance and have superior contacts that will give you a referral. If we’re talking about something like the Sniper ransom, you’re shit out of luck as these people would not wnat the attention that money from such a hot source would bring.

I feel comfortable explaining this, because if you attempt it in the manner I described you will surely fail, as I’ve left out two key elements.

In short, unless you have intimate knowledge and are experienced in International banking doctrine, and have the soul of a con man to boot it won’t work.

Even with all of these things, you’ll still need some luck.

Any other method is pretty much doomed to failure. Some people have suggested an ATM card. These transactions are often photographed and can be tracked. Most ATMs have a $500 limit. You have to go to an ATM a lot of times to get 10mm in $500 incremenmts. Each one of those gives the police a crack at your location. The law of averages makes it a certainty that luck will place a policeman close enough to one of those atms when you make a withdrawal that he can be alerted and you can be followed and arrested before you can get away with the money.

Any method that has you taking physical custody of the money is pretty much doomed to failure. Assuming you can use a gimmick and get away clean with the cash without getting caught you still have the problem of ensuring that the money is clean. You have to worry about a transmitter and markings, but more importantly you still have to worry even if the bills are completely clean and unmarked.

Nowadays they can simply record each and every unique serial number on each and every bill even if they’re used and nonconsecutive.

Not long after you spend one of those dollars it will work its way back to the Fed depository system where the number will be read electronically. As these dollars get spent they’ll be able to put together a pretty good picture of where you are and what you’re doing. and they’ll likely close in on you.

You could also attempt to take the money out of the country and deposit it into a third party bank where you could make use of the wire system to launder it as above, however you just can’t walk into a bank with a bag of money and then wire it out. In such circumstances there’s usually a several day delay while the authenticity of the currency is verified which will include an inquiry into the serial numbers. Assuming you find a cooperative backwater where that’s not an issue, you’re still no better off than if you had the money directly wired in the first place.

Hard commodities also represent difficulties too obvious to explain.

There are some other possibilities but all of these are much riskier than the laundering scenario.

15

Why not start out with the ATM card based on an account set up with a fake name, then have them wire transfer money into it, so he never has to pick anything up?

Because whatever they wire into the account, they can take out – does anyone really think they’d leave the money in that account patiently, or not instruct the ATMs to capture his card, delay him with error messages, or otherwise thwart his withdrawals or stall him till the cops got to the ATM?

Unless he finds a way to multiply-re-transfer it instantaneously, while covering his tracks (it’s a cinch <any> government banking authority of any jurisdiction with a banking system sophisticated enough to handle such transfers would cooperate with the U.S. demands to re-trace the transfers). So he’d have to have the ability to alter banking computers to delete or hide his tracks. If he were technically competent enough to do this, he could just go ahead and alter the computers to transfer the money to him from someone else’s account(s) in the first place without having to kill anyone or demand any ransom.

Physical transfer? Can’t see it, even if not for the marking/tracing issue.

16

Why ask for the $10M in dollars? How about $10M in bearer bonds? You could fit that in an envelope. Still raises the dead drop and tracking problems, of course. There might be some commodoties that you could get, and then sell to a single end user for the $10M, something like tritnium,Or a single rare coin,or some Californium?

17

Hmmm. Dr. Evil?

“10 MILLION dollars!”

Or Office Space?

“Can you believe what dorks we are? We’re looking up ‘money laundering’ in the dictionary.”

18

Unfortunately strolling up to an otherwise unpatronized BofA at 3am wearing a mask is a pretty easy way to circumvent cameras

I’m kinda figuring this is more about financiing his day to day operations and life than “making a big score”

Police alerted faster and more accurately than say firing a rifle and killing someone in a major city?? The reason I went the ATM route was, there are hundreds in any decent size city. Even if every bank was cooperating its still a needle in a haystack. Track every bill out of every ATM? Yeah right. maybe if you loaded every ATM with new sequential bills so you could determine the #'s attached to his transaction. The ATM route would be so easy just because its so innocuous. Thousands of people use them every day. Intercepting someone in the 90 seconds they are at an ATM.

They guy isn’t stupid or he would be in custody already, most likely if he cant get cash in 1 minute or so he will be gone. Cards are easy enough to duplicate, just bring copies to avoid losing the card info. If the money is there and and he stops shooting people, let him go, you might catch him via the money tracing. If money is deposited, and shooting continues pull it.

19

drach:

The bills that come out of an ATM are safe. Using one is not. Each time you do, it’s a contact and a revelation of your location.

The guy’s extremely stupid, and they may have caught him.

20

I have an email from some nice Nigerian folks who may be able to help him.:smiley: