I found the following news story to be astonishing. It actually took a minute or so for it to sink in. Initially, I just couldn’t believe this.
Allegedly, a lady banker and her husband have been charged with stealing about $35,000 from the accounts of one or more of the passengers on a downed Malaysian Airlines MH370.
The first thing that seemed so unbelievable to me was how anyone who worked in the banking industry could ever believe this is something for which they would not get caught. Robbing a bank has to be one of the most stupid crimes there is because the rate of conviction is just so high and the amount of money bank robbers usually get is so small compared to what would be needed to make this worthwhile. And stealing from a bank has to run a close second.
The only way I would ever consider robbing a bank would be if I would get at least ten million dollars. That’s how much it would take to move to some country outside of US jurisdiction and then live the rest of my life in luxury. But even that would not be enough. I would need to believe I had some new angle that would make the risk of being caught far less than it is today.
So, why on earth would this lady banker ever choose to steal an amount like $35K? That is almost nothing compared to what she would need. Unless I’m missing something (which I may well be doing), this has to be an incredibly stupid crime. Far too stupid to ever be committed by someone who works in the banking industry. But that is just my opinion.
Malaysian police have charged two people over the alleged theft of around $35,000 (110,600 Malaysian ringgits) from the bank accounts of four passengers on missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
That lady has balls.
No brains, but big, huge balls.
Trying to steal ten million dollars in cash would not be easy. Even if you get away with the cash, do you have any idea how much that cash would weigh and how much space it would occupy?
My first guess was that it would be far too big and heavy to manage without some huge support. So, I took out my calculator and figured the following …
One million dollars is ten thousand hundred dollar bills. Ten million dollars is one hundred thousand hundred dollar bills.
Thousand dollar bills are just far too difficult to pass. Too many questions would be asked. So, imagine trying to steal one hundred thousand bills. Do you know how much that would weigh and how much space it would take?
I weighed 20 bills and found they weighed 19.1 grams. So, one bill would weigh 1 gram. OK. So 100,000 grams is 220 pounds.
Unless I made an error somehow (which is very possible), that means that ten million dollars in hundred dollar bills would weigh 220 lbs. Not impossible to manage. But still very much of a pain in the neck. Many problems on different fronts. Too many for me.
They weren’t robbing a bank, they were using electronic transfers and ATM cards to drain money from four accounts. I’m guessing that $35,000 is either the amount of money in those accounts, or it was all that they’d been able to pull before they were caught. They started with one account and when it looked like they were successful, they kept going.
I’d guess it was a crime of opportunity. Unless the passengers have been declared dead, any account that did not already have a second person associated with it would not be accessable by the passengers’ heirs. The thieves waited two months, which they might have thought was long enough to see which accounts weren’t being watched by anyone.
Stealing big money from the bank wasn’t their intention. They went for what they thought they could siphon away quietly. Even if one of the passengers had had a big account, big money never siphons away quietly.
Yllaria’s got it right. Anyone who is either single, or part of a couple where both were on the plane probably doesn’t have anyone accessing the account right now. Do you know the bank balance of your siblings / parents / adult children? I don’t. If I suddenly got access to their account months after a tragedy occurred, I don’t know if I’d realize that it was thousands of dollars/ringgits lower than when they disappeared. As despicable as it is, it was a good idea; they just missed something (account monitoring) in their execution.