Define rich and define criminal. In the United States, any fair reading of the stats indicates that being poor makes you a target for criminals. Kidnapping fo

Define rich and define criminal. In the United States, any fair reading of the stats indicates that being poor makes you a target for criminals. Kidnapping for ransom does not exist in the United States. (That statement sounds like an exaggeration, but look it up -- the FBI basically exists to solve kidnapping and it does it with extreme prejudice. [+]) If you e.g. sell a startup for $20 million and suddenly have a very large balance in your checking account, you may have the experience of having to suddenly become radically more sophisticated with regards to a number of white collar threat vectors, some of which are formally criminalized and many of which are not. One example of many: you will suddenly have many people attempt to involve you in real estate deals with high-above-market returns and no risk. This successfully transfers hundreds of millions a year from people who happen to have money (including those who might not ping HN's radar as rich -- retirees are at particular risk) to a combination of scammers and, well, real estate speculators who just happened to misunderestimate their chance of failure. Some friends/social acquaintances of mine can relate a number of not-very-fun experiences here, none of which involve consummated victimization but at least a few of which require costly ongoing defensive efforts. [+] Edit: I looked it up, and contrary to my expectations the nationwide incidence of kidnapping-for-ransom is a non-zero number (on the order of two dozen a year nationwide). My prior expectation was, literally, zero.