It's not enough if your 'Americas Most Wanted'. But, there are a lot of 'deadbeat' dads that are actively pursued. They often use similar methods and cash only jobs.
EX: Bike couriers are a good example of relatively high pay and often minimal documentation.
perhaps thats not disappearing though, merely hiding. I mean, being a cash in hand bike courier isn't going to set up a pension fund, is it? Old age is a long way off when you are 25, but it comes along eventually
I don't think you could really disappear depending on your pursuer/ threat model. However, if you were to make more money than you needed to survive you could presumably invest in something like Bitcoin or alt-currency and with the legalisation of crowd-funding you could potentially also make tangible investments in companies through similar mechanisms to the blockchain.
Again, I don't think you could knock the ball out of the park or allude a motivated state agency if you were a terrorist or something; but if you were in a similar position to the subject of the article you could probably avoid capture and maintain a semblance of normalcy.
The easiest thing to do would probably be to buy gold, which is not inflationary like money is supposed to be. Of course that's not as good as an index fund, but at least it's not cash.
You could also become a loan shark, which can be lucrative, but your illegal status would give your customers leverage against you, which is something you really don't want if this is your retirement savings...
Here's an idea: selling ETFs as physical documents, or as a sort of cryptocurrency. You could trade with others like cash, except it rises with inflation.
Keeping money under the mattress is a good way to get cleaned out if anyone gets too curious about how such a person saves.
Becoming a loan shark is a possibility, I suppose, but puts someone in direct competition with professional criminals and creates a whole new set of existential and legal problems.
One low-risk strategy I've heard of being used by cash-savvy people is purchasing food stamps at a discount to their face value. Again, pretty much any kind of black market activity comes with legal risks.
Considering taxes for more conventional jobs, $40k under-the-table cash would be the equivalent of $60-70k of conventional wage income. Depending on city and state, that would be either solidly middle income or lower middle income.
First, many undocumented immigrants pay state and federal taxes; it's difficult to obtain a bank account otherwise. Second, their exclusion from the regular system of credit scoring and numerous other aspects of the economy that most people take for granted impose a significant hidden tax, albeit one that mostly flows to private actors such as landlords etc..
This is something I know a lot about. Such people are systematically excluded from advancement in society in almost every respect, and the 'workarounds' that would allow them to participate fully and freely in the economy are crimes that can, at the discretion of prosecutors, result in the threat of a very heavy prison sentence. The penalties imposed for administrative non-compliance are wildly disproportionate to the scale of the offense.
This is by design; for quite a few years there was a notion in sentencing policy (and similar areas like this) that the best deterrent effect was obtained my multiplying the social cost of the offense by inverse probability of detection; that is to say, there is a fairly low chance of being caught but the people who do get caught are punished for both their infraction and that of all the people other people who weren't caught.
Essentially criminal justice today uses the language of morality (very popular with conservatives (qua Jefferson Sessions, who as an elf^H^H^H attorney-general is apparently magically immune from punishment despite his perjurious habits), but uses the logic of economics and incentives. The administration of criminal justice is for all practical purposes a commercial enterprise built around slave labor which depends on a steady supply of incarcerable people to function profitably.
A full discussion of this is beyond the scope of a HN comment or even a single article or book; entire careers have been devoted to the study and analysis of this issue. This law review article offers a somewhat accessible introduction.
The US still seems like the best place to try and disappear, because of the lack of uniformity across cities, states, etc. Bootstrapping your way into a birth certificate, drivers license, voter ID, etc, is easier when there are so many different systems to try.
Any immigrant heavy country would be a good choice, and maybe you can find one where the government isn't quite so intent on tracking down "illegals". I think the US would be getting harder thanks to the RealID act, online citizenship checks, etc...
It might be easier to move to a country that's a little more corrupt so you can bribe your way into the system. Maybe Italy or Greece or a former Soviet country. You need to find a balance between cities big enough to disappear in and cities where the law enforcement doesn't give a shit as long as you grease the wheels a bit.
> Any immigrant heavy country would be a good choice
I think the point is that there is no national ID in the US, and often less in terms of showing ID's. In a lot of places in Europe, you have to show ID to check into a hotel, for instance.
Yes, that clarifies my point. In the US for IDs and birth certificates, you have dozens to hundreds of different places with different rules to choose from. Finding a corrupt or inept person in one of them seems likely.
And you can, as you point out, often work around a lack of ID.
It seems like there's an awful lot of surveillance, though, with little in the way of wiggle room to bribe your way out of getting caught at a corner store.
Why not somewhere with a large expat community that you could also probably tap for information and experience? One of the megacities in East/Southeast Asia, India, Morocco, Turkey...you'd at least want the sort of place where you could easily buy a warning if the authorities are on to you. The US' pay-to-play system is too rich for most peoples' blood.
I don't know that random facial recognition has been used to any notable degree to catch fugitives in the US. The FBI system has a high failure rate, so I suspect it's used only manually. Such that it's risky only if you are continuing to commit crimes.
There's an interesting podcast (Criminal by phoebe judge) which has a couple of episodes about disappearing. One way is to go to a corrupt country and buy a fake birth certificate. Use that to officially stop existing
Nearly 200,000 Americans over age 18 were recorded missing by law enforcement in 2007, but they represent only a fraction of the intentional missing: Many aren’t reported unless they are believed to be in danger. And according to a 2003 British study, two-thirds of missing adults make a conscious decision to leave.
Edited to add:
A few years ago, an investigator named Philip Klein was hired by Dateline NBC to locate Patrick McDermott, a onetime Hollywood cameraman who also happened to be Olivia Newton-John’s former partner. McDermott had disappeared from a fishing boat in the Pacific, and the authorities presumed him dead. Early on, Klein likewise turned up only the vaguest hints that McDermott could be alive. “This was the ultimate walk-away,” Klein says.
Then Klein decided to set up a Web site about the disappearance. Purporting to be asking for tips, it was designed specifically to trap visitors’ IP addresses. Suspecting that McDermott was in contact with at least one confidant from his former life — and relying on the investigator’s maxim that people on the run always monitor the pursuit — Klein blocked search engine crawlers from cataloging the site. He gave the URL only to McDermott’s friends and family. Ninety-six hours later, it started registering multiple daily hits from an IP address in the beach town of Sayulita, Mexico. Klein says he eventually tracked McDermott around South America and contacted him through an intermediary. McDermott had a simple message for the investigator: His new life was “nobody’s business.”
So, I guess if the law isn't looking for you, it can be done.
That's what makes his claim that he was pressured to do this by some gang, seem dubious. More probable is the idea that he was the one who kept the full 1.6 million.
If that were the case then were the money go? He ran out of cash pretty quick in that small Colorado town and the only extravagant purchase in the story was a $16k light aircraft.
I have to wonder how much he went "Why did I spend almost two decades looking over my shoulder for a mere 3 year jail term?"
I also have to wonder just how much he hated the fake ID guy after the millionth It joke.
He paid for the 4 bedroom house in cash, paid for the aircraft, didn't have a job for some time so house expenses. I'm guessing he bought cars, etc. Every move he made probably came with expenses. Since he had to purchase houses in cash as he wouldn't have been able to get a loan.
Roughly $300,000 in 2017 dollars. I still don't get it, but they were able to live a decent life with the money - had a nice house and a plane and everything.
As a someone in my late 20s I could sort of see it BUT not with a family and child. Seems insane. If you were broke and unmarried I could see it being enticing. Also, he potentially thought he would make more? If it was a 1.25M he could have thought he would have received more or that it was actually a smaller haul than imagined/
It sounds like this guy never committed another crime (except to keep his identity hidden), and was a productive member of society for decades. If so, then what was the point of locking him up for 5 years? Who did that help?
I think the inability to just disappear has a lot to do with increasing recidivism. If you can't wipe your record clean, and are always going to be tarnished, then why bother following the rules?
The purpose of the justice system shouldn't be to exact retribution — it should be to rehabilitate. It's not about consequences, it's about putting people back on the right track.
stouset would probably have a different viewpoint if they were the victim of a robbery, while capncrunch would have a different viewpoint if they had been imprisoned or knew someone who was.
I have been the victim of a robbery. And I have a close family member who just started a 6.5 year sentence in federal prison. My current views were formed before the events leading up to this (and before the robbery).
I also recognize that arguing for political change based on n=1 sample size and personal experience is an horrible way to approach problems at a state, city, or country level.
> It's not about consequences, it's about putting people back on the right track.
No, it's about more than just that. People have a built-in sense of justice [1], which needs to be addressed, otherwise it will cause a lot of social problems. Also, the justice system is there to try to deter people from doing crimes in the first place.
The reason our society has advanced as it has in the first place is because we have defied many of our built-in human tendencies and replaced them with logical constructs. This is no different.
Since it appears that nobody was physically injured by his theft, I really feel the stature of limitations should apply here. Nobody is better off by his extradition, imprisonment, and exile.
Nonviolent bank robbery is pretty low on the social ills scale. That opinion will annoy a lot of people, but get back to me when white-collar crime is prosecuted with the same enthusiasm. This guy is being made an example of for political reasons, nothing more. His crime is to have broken the rules that were designed to keep him in his place in the working class.
63 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadEX: Bike couriers are a good example of relatively high pay and often minimal documentation.
Again, I don't think you could knock the ball out of the park or allude a motivated state agency if you were a terrorist or something; but if you were in a similar position to the subject of the article you could probably avoid capture and maintain a semblance of normalcy.
You could also become a loan shark, which can be lucrative, but your illegal status would give your customers leverage against you, which is something you really don't want if this is your retirement savings...
Becoming a loan shark is a possibility, I suppose, but puts someone in direct competition with professional criminals and creates a whole new set of existential and legal problems.
One low-risk strategy I've heard of being used by cash-savvy people is purchasing food stamps at a discount to their face value. Again, pretty much any kind of black market activity comes with legal risks.
I was replying to the idea of $40k (cash, untaxed) as not much money. It corresponds to the take home of a middle class income in much of the US.
This is by design; for quite a few years there was a notion in sentencing policy (and similar areas like this) that the best deterrent effect was obtained my multiplying the social cost of the offense by inverse probability of detection; that is to say, there is a fairly low chance of being caught but the people who do get caught are punished for both their infraction and that of all the people other people who weren't caught.
Essentially criminal justice today uses the language of morality (very popular with conservatives (qua Jefferson Sessions, who as an elf^H^H^H attorney-general is apparently magically immune from punishment despite his perjurious habits), but uses the logic of economics and incentives. The administration of criminal justice is for all practical purposes a commercial enterprise built around slave labor which depends on a steady supply of incarcerable people to function profitably.
A full discussion of this is beyond the scope of a HN comment or even a single article or book; entire careers have been devoted to the study and analysis of this issue. This law review article offers a somewhat accessible introduction.
http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimec...
There's cameras on the streets, drivers licence photos are searchable, and phones are practically spying devices.
It might be easier to move to a country that's a little more corrupt so you can bribe your way into the system. Maybe Italy or Greece or a former Soviet country. You need to find a balance between cities big enough to disappear in and cities where the law enforcement doesn't give a shit as long as you grease the wheels a bit.
I think the point is that there is no national ID in the US, and often less in terms of showing ID's. In a lot of places in Europe, you have to show ID to check into a hotel, for instance.
And you can, as you point out, often work around a lack of ID.
Why not somewhere with a large expat community that you could also probably tap for information and experience? One of the megacities in East/Southeast Asia, India, Morocco, Turkey...you'd at least want the sort of place where you could easily buy a warning if the authorities are on to you. The US' pay-to-play system is too rich for most peoples' blood.
Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?
https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take...
and:
Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened
https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff_vanish2/
Nearly 200,000 Americans over age 18 were recorded missing by law enforcement in 2007, but they represent only a fraction of the intentional missing: Many aren’t reported unless they are believed to be in danger. And according to a 2003 British study, two-thirds of missing adults make a conscious decision to leave.
Edited to add:
A few years ago, an investigator named Philip Klein was hired by Dateline NBC to locate Patrick McDermott, a onetime Hollywood cameraman who also happened to be Olivia Newton-John’s former partner. McDermott had disappeared from a fishing boat in the Pacific, and the authorities presumed him dead. Early on, Klein likewise turned up only the vaguest hints that McDermott could be alive. “This was the ultimate walk-away,” Klein says.
Then Klein decided to set up a Web site about the disappearance. Purporting to be asking for tips, it was designed specifically to trap visitors’ IP addresses. Suspecting that McDermott was in contact with at least one confidant from his former life — and relying on the investigator’s maxim that people on the run always monitor the pursuit — Klein blocked search engine crawlers from cataloging the site. He gave the URL only to McDermott’s friends and family. Ninety-six hours later, it started registering multiple daily hits from an IP address in the beach town of Sayulita, Mexico. Klein says he eventually tracked McDermott around South America and contacted him through an intermediary. McDermott had a simple message for the investigator: His new life was “nobody’s business.”
So, I guess if the law isn't looking for you, it can be done.
For ten times as much I get it, but that's very little to live your entire life in an unsettled manner.
http://www.in2013dollars.com/1993-dollars-in-2017?amount=160...
I have to wonder how much he went "Why did I spend almost two decades looking over my shoulder for a mere 3 year jail term?"
I also have to wonder just how much he hated the fake ID guy after the millionth It joke.
That is what he says.
The last quote in the article makes me think that...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_discounting
I think the inability to just disappear has a lot to do with increasing recidivism. If you can't wipe your record clean, and are always going to be tarnished, then why bother following the rules?
If someone can get away with a huge robbery and not suffer any consequences, that completely undermines the justice system.
I also recognize that arguing for political change based on n=1 sample size and personal experience is an horrible way to approach problems at a state, city, or country level.
No, it's about more than just that. People have a built-in sense of justice [1], which needs to be addressed, otherwise it will cause a lot of social problems. Also, the justice system is there to try to deter people from doing crimes in the first place.
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10239-sense-of-justic...
Nonviolent bank robbery is pretty low on the social ills scale. That opinion will annoy a lot of people, but get back to me when white-collar crime is prosecuted with the same enthusiasm. This guy is being made an example of for political reasons, nothing more. His crime is to have broken the rules that were designed to keep him in his place in the working class.