Crime is a really stupid way to make money. I mean objectively, the cost benefit analysis just doesn't make any sense. The only reason to do it is you have poor

Crime is a really stupid way to make money. I mean objectively, the cost benefit analysis just doesn't make any sense. The only reason to do it is you have poor impulse control and can't succeed in normal financial activities. An ultra-smart ultra-selfish hacker would sit down, do the math, and spend 5 years killing it on Wall-street doing quasi-legal machine trading in total safety. Rather than risk imprisonment and permanently damaging his career prospects over a few thousand dollars from Grandma's credit card. Case in point: Carl Gugasian, graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. Got a masters in systems analysis, and was a PhD student in statistics. His intelligent, methodical approach to robbing banks let him get away with it for 30 years. He earned about 2 million dollars doing it, which is about a million less than his undergraduate engineering degree alone would have earned him during that same period if he'd just gotten a regular job. He also eventually got caught, through pure dumb chance he couldn't have planned for, and spent 20 years in prison. So not only did he make less money being a criminal, he got to go to federal pound me in the ass prison for his golden years.