From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Thu Sep 04 2003 - 23:55:55 MDT
--- Emlyn O'regan <oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au>
wrote:
> That said, I think you still must explain organised
> crime bodies, especially
> long standing ones. I think there you get criminals
> who can become
> extremely, persistently wealthy. They most likely
> include the more
> intelligent members of the set of criminals,
> although probably contain a
> goodly number of bozos too (like legitimate
> business).
Oh, no question. It is likely they comprise almost
all of the "small minority" of relatively smart
crooks. But even they tend to run legitimate
businesses as well. Whatever brings in the money.
One kind of scam they run, we're all probably familiar
with. You know all those spams for ultra-cheap
medications? True, a number of them come from
legitimate generics, but a number of them are also
stolen medications. They don't care (don't really
know) if the meds have expired, been ruined due to
poor storage conditions, or what. This is one of the
ways some of the more corrupt governments get money
out of the medicine in humanitarian aid packages meant
for their people. (They do this with the food, too.
Anything that can be repackaged and sold to the
outside world.)
And, of course, don't forget that the same tongue that
can swindle a few bucks today would be right at home
in the mouth of tomorrow's politician.
> I think there are probably strong psychological
> reasons for there to be
> intelligent, uncaught criminals; I'd bet there are
> people of extreme talents
> with a taste for risk, who are drawn to it. I wonder
> if they tend to either
> be eventually caught, or drop out after a little
> while?
My own experiences with such in the cracker (black hat
hacker) community is that, if they do not wind up
getting rich off their efforts within a few years,
they tend to switch over to the legal side as
"security consultants". I would not be surprised if
this happens in other cases too, generating a number
of police and military recruits. It's been cited that
one of the leading indicators for crime has been youth
unemployment: a bunch of kids (teens, sometimes on up
to mid 20s depending on how one counts the statistics)
not seeing anything better to do with their time.
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