How could one benefit from an error like this and escape with all the money? Transfer to an offshore account and head to a country with no extradition to Australia? Would that work?
Convert the value into high-value commodities (e.g. gold, diamonds); get those insured; and then have a friend steal them from you. Collect the insurance money. (You’ll use this to repay the transfer.)
Have the friend fence the goods. (In the case of diamonds, intentionally write down the serial numbers incorrectly so that your friend can launder them without being caught.)
Put the cleaned money into an offshore account owned by a shell company with identity protection. Contract your services to said shell company with a very high rate.
You still owe the money back at that point; it converts into a debt, that can be further converted into a lien on your assets. (Also, I think you missed the part where this story is about fiat money, not crypto.)
The point of the insurance step is, effectively, “doubling your money”, so that you can give half of it back, and not be in debt.
Of course not. What are you implying? I have great affinity for the legs of snitches. They're very nice legs, and I certainly wouldn't want to see anything to happen to them.
Place the funds back into a crypto.com account, transfer the funds through a tumbler into a wallet you control.
Open support ticket with crypto.com saying you've been phished and that the funds are gone. Make sure to capture in writing their response that funds cannot be recovered.
Wait for them to try to recover funds. Forward them their own email and explain that you did return the funds but then they were lost and can't be recovered.
The scheme is highly amusing, the problem being that you still have to launder the money. Sure, the keys to the new wallet are available, but how to explain later how the money was earned in the first place (and why no taxes paid then)?
I got the joke. AFAIK, all comments on this were jokes (turning crypto's no chargeback mechanism on its holders; super-complicated movie-like scheme; mine was doing what the lady in the article already did). I was hoping someone had a joke to 'deal' with the tax office.
Tumblers are trusted and are commonly not providing sufficient protection to hide links from a state-level actor. Practically nobody who knows what they're doing would be using a typical tumbler service, for multiple reasons. The field has moved significantly since they would be used for something like this.
I definitely don't know what I'm doing and don't claim to. Wasn't a serious recommendation and hopefully not a serious question either.
I don't think you'd need to defend yourself against a state level actor here. 10M gone missing from a crypto exchange isn't exactly a national security event. In the crypto world I think that's just called Tuesday.
It's fun to think about. I think it would be hard to make the most of the money and have a great lifestyle while keeping a low profile and not getting caught.
It costs a lot less than $10M if you want to move to Thailand and live off-grid in some remote area. You can probably do that for a lot less than $100,000, including a Thailand Elite Visa. If that's part of your plan, then just hold onto the money and earn interest, or maybe give it back and hope for a reward. Or just save up the money normally, it's not that much.
I wonder if it's still possible to change your identity in a developed country. Maybe you could move to a new country and start using a fake passport to establish your new identity over time. But I think that stopped being possible sometime in the 90s or early 2000s.
I found it stressful enough just to move to a new country and get a visa legally. I can't imagine also worrying about getting extradited and sent to prison at any moment. Sounds like a terrible life. I wouldn't keep the money.
EDIT: Just reading some of the other replies, and wow, there are some genius criminals in here. Maybe I would take the money!
Buy a friend's mansion using very inflated valuation. When the judge orders you to sell in order to paid Crypto.com back, sell for true value. Enter bankruptcy (since you cannot afford the difference) and discharge your debt. Friend later gives you half.
Comments
How could one benefit from an error like this and escape with all the money? Transfer to an offshore account and head to a country with no extradition to Australia? Would that work?
Asking for a friend.
Convert the value into high-value commodities (e.g. gold, diamonds); get those insured; and then have a friend steal them from you. Collect the insurance money. (You’ll use this to repay the transfer.)
Have the friend fence the goods. (In the case of diamonds, intentionally write down the serial numbers incorrectly so that your friend can launder them without being caught.)
Put the cleaned money into an offshore account owned by a shell company with identity protection. Contract your services to said shell company with a very high rate.
you dont need to do all that. just convert it all to monero and say you lost your private key.
or just say you lost your private key.
You still owe the money back at that point; it converts into a debt, that can be further converted into a lien on your assets. (Also, I think you missed the part where this story is about fiat money, not crypto.)
The point of the insurance step is, effectively, “doubling your money”, so that you can give half of it back, and not be in debt.
Go on: do you have other, "friends" that specialize in breaking the legs of snitches?
Of course not. What are you implying? I have great affinity for the legs of snitches. They're very nice legs, and I certainly wouldn't want to see anything to happen to them.
Wasn't this just the plot of Heat (1995) ?
Or something to that extent.
Van Zant didn't get them stolen, he just used the opportunity offered by the thieves.
Place the funds back into a crypto.com account, transfer the funds through a tumbler into a wallet you control.
Open support ticket with crypto.com saying you've been phished and that the funds are gone. Make sure to capture in writing their response that funds cannot be recovered.
Wait for them to try to recover funds. Forward them their own email and explain that you did return the funds but then they were lost and can't be recovered.
The scheme is highly amusing, the problem being that you still have to launder the money. Sure, the keys to the new wallet are available, but how to explain later how the money was earned in the first place (and why no taxes paid then)?
I didn't mean it as a serious response, but I'm not sure there's any scheme that doesn't also involve laundering the money somehow if you keep it.
I got the joke. AFAIK, all comments on this were jokes (turning crypto's no chargeback mechanism on its holders; super-complicated movie-like scheme; mine was doing what the lady in the article already did). I was hoping someone had a joke to 'deal' with the tax office.
Do you see any crypto bros explaining source of their new wealth?
NFTs.
Tumblers are trusted and are commonly not providing sufficient protection to hide links from a state-level actor. Practically nobody who knows what they're doing would be using a typical tumbler service, for multiple reasons. The field has moved significantly since they would be used for something like this.
I definitely don't know what I'm doing and don't claim to. Wasn't a serious recommendation and hopefully not a serious question either.
I don't think you'd need to defend yourself against a state level actor here. 10M gone missing from a crypto exchange isn't exactly a national security event. In the crypto world I think that's just called Tuesday.
I got the tone but others may not.
It's fun to think about. I think it would be hard to make the most of the money and have a great lifestyle while keeping a low profile and not getting caught.
It costs a lot less than $10M if you want to move to Thailand and live off-grid in some remote area. You can probably do that for a lot less than $100,000, including a Thailand Elite Visa. If that's part of your plan, then just hold onto the money and earn interest, or maybe give it back and hope for a reward. Or just save up the money normally, it's not that much.
I wonder if it's still possible to change your identity in a developed country. Maybe you could move to a new country and start using a fake passport to establish your new identity over time. But I think that stopped being possible sometime in the 90s or early 2000s.
I found it stressful enough just to move to a new country and get a visa legally. I can't imagine also worrying about getting extradited and sent to prison at any moment. Sounds like a terrible life. I wouldn't keep the money.
EDIT: Just reading some of the other replies, and wow, there are some genius criminals in here. Maybe I would take the money!
Buy a friend's mansion using very inflated valuation. When the judge orders you to sell in order to paid Crypto.com back, sell for true value. Enter bankruptcy (since you cannot afford the difference) and discharge your debt. Friend later gives you half.
Go for the free interest and repay the 10mil when asked. In this case would have been 7 months worth
We still suffer negative interest rates here in Holland [1].
[1] https://www.abnamro.nl/nl/prive/rente/negatieve-rente.html
around 100K
reinvest and then use the winnings to buy the entire company in a hostile takeover. and then dissolve it.
company gone, no entity to pursue the lawsuit.
- but used laptop at the flea market, bonus points if out of town
- log to your crypto.scam account from 'behind 7 proxies' using free wifi
- transfer funds to some crypto mixer, then multiple private wallets
- delete account or change password
- zero fill storage, throw away laptop
- few days later report losing access to your crypto.scam assets
- wait couple of years
Do like the banks- call it identity theft and let the exchange deal with it.
They mastered victim-blaming.
Looks like your friend is traveling to beautiful Vanuatu ;) https://nomadcapitalist.com/expat/the-best-non-extradition-c...