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> Dude just got greedy. It seems to me that once a person builds an illegal habit, it demonstrates they: (a) probably have a higher risk tolerance than most pe

by xpe 3y ago

> Dude just got greedy. It seems to me that once a person builds an illegal habit, it demonstrates they: (a) probably have a higher risk tolerance than most people and/or an inaccurate understanding of the empirical risk level and/or (b) they have, perhaps only temporarily, found a self-interestedly-rational aspect of law/society to exploit. Once one's behavior crosses into that realm, "dude just got greedy" seems to miss the point. It was greed that got them there, right? How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't claim to know, but I'm suggesting that risk-adjusted _optimality_ and the criminal mind are not highly correlated. Anyhow, it doesn't seem the 'level' of greed was the problem; it was the level of spending; the article suggests that Kara's lifestyle upgrade attracted considerable attention. More generally, the risk-adjusted calculus between "steal a lot quickly" vs "steal a lot slowly" is interesting. First, being a repairman of said machines, he would be a suspect if any discrepancy was found. Second, dragging a larger-than-usual bags of coins to the bank for years seemed rather brazen. But perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Putting both together, sure, larger amounts would attract more attention, but the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. As a guess, one might think halfing his intake might only reduce his risk by 10%. If so, a self-interested, amoral calculus might suggest that his intake was reasonable.

refurb 3y ago
All good points. But there is also an element of "if they haven't caught me now, they won't ever". Risk tolerance increases over time.
toyg 3y ago
> How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't know, how big is Wall Street nowadays? /s More seriously: it's likely that there are indeed a lot of "optimally greedy" criminals - it's just that we don't label them criminals, because they don't get caught. I guess the actual numbers are somewhat dependent on your trust in the ability of law enforcement. > perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Perhaps it was just the '80s, when banks didn't really want to ask any questions. > the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. I agree there. Note that criminals do tend to understand this, typically regarding the results of conviction. It's the reason capital punishment is not really a deterrent: because once you pass the threshold (which is often with a single act), punishment does not grow prportionally, so they might as well do it over and over.
genman 3y ago
He could have stopped stealing when he wanted to have a more lavish life style and they wouldn't be have been able to catch him (at least not red handed).
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  If they improved their auditing and revised their models, they might get suspicious if dude quit and their revenue suddenly went up 25%. Or not ask any questions at all and get big bonuses…
rsynnott 3y ago
> How many optimally greedy criminals are there? Bernie Madoff might be close to an example; his scheme kept going for an _amazingly_ long time, and he made some effort at times to reduce inflow to keep it somewhat under control. There was probably a world in which it only came out after he died; as it was he was kind of unlucky with the timing. Of course, there might be plenty of optimally greedy criminals out there, and you’ll never know; more or less by definition they do not get caught.
- avidiax 3y ago
  The best part of Bernie Madoff's grift, in my opinion, is that it follows the notion that "you can't cheat an honest man". No one had any legitimate idea for how Bernie could beat the market by such an amount and so consistently, and yet they still invested. They must have thought that he was insider trading or suspected that it was a Ponzi. Roughly half his investors made money by cashing out, which is not something you'd usually do if you thought the fund was legitimate.
1letterunixname 3y ago
He did make the "classic, amateur, movie thief" mistakes of spending lavishly and stealing a large fraction of coins that couldn't be covered simply by driving a crappy '77 Chevy Malibu. (That was a particularly ugly car with bad paint. [0] My parents had a '78.) This is the idiocy of committing various forms of graft or embezzlement in the Western world: the rewards are small and short-term compared to the nonzero legal and financial consequences of getting caught. It's that most people are bad at quantifying the probabilities and qualitatively assessing their risk exposure before they're caught and rationalizing they're different and somehow smarter than everyone else at all times. His theft didn't go unnoticed and they eventually had to hire a private detective Even if someone could steal much quickly the equivalent of, say, a billion dollars without raising any suspicion or leaving any trace evidence and launder it covertly, the problem becomes there is no country to disappear to where the proceeds could be utilized and where property rights are respected: countries including Iceland, Switzerland, Ecuador, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Yemen, China, and DPRK will not help you. One could attempt to live openly, but they would find it difficult to launder their funds from nowhere into the legitimate banking world without inevitably raising suspicions or being caught through forensic accounting. Therefore, a wise criminal™ is generally better off using legitimized means to facilitate large-scale wealth transfer from people and organizations that lack economic and political power using trickery, obfuscation, and complexity. Either that, or by creating genuine (or genuine-appearing) value and monetizing it well through work that doesn't involve criminality reduces the risk of ending up poor and/or in prison. Apart from specialized IP or knowledge work ability that can be productized as a startup, the areas of real estate, public markets, and fintech are the most obvious targets for non-lifestyle business models. Other non-/semi-lifestyle business models readily achievable by an individual is becoming a B2B supplier of high-value, high-margin specialized goods that present one or more barriers to entry, i.e., aircraft parts, nuclear energy parts, safety systems, or medical devices. 0. https://topclassiccarsforsale.com/chevrolet/288637-1977-chevrolet-malibu-classic-2-door-chevy.html https://topclassiccarsforsale.com/chevrolet/288637-1977-chev...

by xpe 3y ago

refurb 3y ago

All good points. But there is also an element of "if they haven't caught me now, they won't ever". Risk tolerance increases over time.

toyg 3y ago

> How many optimally greedy criminals are there? I don't know, how big is Wall Street nowadays? /s More seriously: it's likely that there are indeed a lot of "optimally greedy" criminals - it's just that we don't label them criminals, because they don't get caught. I guess the actual numbers are somewhat dependent on your trust in the ability of law enforcement. > perhaps the consistency of his behavior made it seem 'normal' to the local bankers? Perhaps it was just the '80s, when banks didn't really want to ask any questions. > the relationship between intake and risk is probably not linear. I agree there. Note that criminals do tend to understand this, typically regarding the results of conviction. It's the reason capital punishment is not really a deterrent: because once you pass the threshold (which is often with a single act), punishment does not grow prportionally, so they might as well do it over and over.

genman 3y ago

He could have stopped stealing when he wanted to have a more lavish life style and they wouldn't be have been able to catch him (at least not red handed).

Scoundreller 3y ago
If they improved their auditing and revised their models, they might get suspicious if dude quit and their revenue suddenly went up 25%. Or not ask any questions at all and get big bonuses…

rsynnott 3y ago

> How many optimally greedy criminals are there? Bernie Madoff might be close to an example; his scheme kept going for an _amazingly_ long time, and he made some effort at times to reduce inflow to keep it somewhat under control. There was probably a world in which it only came out after he died; as it was he was kind of unlucky with the timing. Of course, there might be plenty of optimally greedy criminals out there, and you’ll never know; more or less by definition they do not get caught.

avidiax 3y ago
The best part of Bernie Madoff's grift, in my opinion, is that it follows the notion that "you can't cheat an honest man". No one had any legitimate idea for how Bernie could beat the market by such an amount and so consistently, and yet they still invested. They must have thought that he was insider trading or suspected that it was a Ponzi. Roughly half his investors made money by cashing out, which is not something you'd usually do if you thought the fund was legitimate.

1letterunixname 3y ago

He did make the "classic, amateur, movie thief" mistakes of spending lavishly and stealing a large fraction of coins that couldn't be covered simply by driving a crappy '77 Chevy Malibu. (That was a particularly ugly car with bad paint. [0] My parents had a '78.) This is the idiocy of committing various forms of graft or embezzlement in the Western world: the rewards are small and short-term compared to the nonzero legal and financial consequences of getting caught. It's that most people are bad at quantifying the probabilities and qualitatively assessing their risk exposure before they're caught and rationalizing they're different and somehow smarter than everyone else at all times. His theft didn't go unnoticed and they eventually had to hire a private detective Even if someone could steal much quickly the equivalent of, say, a billion dollars without raising any suspicion or leaving any trace evidence and launder it covertly, the problem becomes there is no country to disappear to where the proceeds could be utilized and where property rights are respected: countries including Iceland, Switzerland, Ecuador, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Belarus, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Yemen, China, and DPRK will not help you. One could attempt to live openly, but they would find it difficult to launder their funds from nowhere into the legitimate banking world without inevitably raising suspicions or being caught through forensic accounting. Therefore, a wise criminal™ is generally better off using legitimized means to facilitate large-scale wealth transfer from people and organizations that lack economic and political power using trickery, obfuscation, and complexity. Either that, or by creating genuine (or genuine-appearing) value and monetizing it well through work that doesn't involve criminality reduces the risk of ending up poor and/or in prison. Apart from specialized IP or knowledge work ability that can be productized as a startup, the areas of real estate, public markets, and fintech are the most obvious targets for non-lifestyle business models. Other non-/semi-lifestyle business models readily achievable by an individual is becoming a B2B supplier of high-value, high-margin specialized goods that present one or more barriers to entry, i.e., aircraft parts, nuclear energy parts, safety systems, or medical devices. 0. https://topclassiccarsforsale.com/chevrolet/288637-1977-chevrolet-malibu-classic-2-door-chevy.html https://topclassiccarsforsale.com/chevrolet/288637-1977-chev...