copperbadge replied to your post “iberiandoctorreplied to yourpost: My sales law prof is telling us the…”
Hell, if you enjoy tales of embezzlement, may I recommend to you “Just Desserts” about the Fruitcake Factory Fraud! https://features.texasmonthly.com/editorial/just-desserts/
Thanks, Sam, that was fascinating!
Honestly, what I find interesting about these kinds of embezzlement cases is how blatant they are. There’s absolutely no subtlety at all, they just handwave away where the money’s coming from. I’m tangentially involved in a case right now with a pastor who stole milllllllions from his church, and his house is the most massive, tacky thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Which seems to be typical for embezzlers, really, that they just go totally, insanely overboard.
I suppose that the ones that don’t just don’t get caught.
I think a lot of the time it’s because embezzled money doesn’t feel “real”.
Intellectually you know that you didn’t earn that money, and in addition, if you’re in a position to embezzle, it’s because you already have a job, which means you’re getting a wage. So unless you’re deep in debt and stealing the cash to pay off a debt (which I think is how a lot of it starts) you bucket the money into two separate areas: “earned salary” that you have been culturally conditioned to use for paying bills, buying food, etc., and “free money” that you got for nothing and you have no obligation to do anything specific with. So you just….blow it.
Like, the idea of stealing a million dollars and investing it never occurs to a lot of people because investing is something you do with earned money. If the money is already in your “stole this so can’t put it to honest use” bucket, you might as well spring for a Ferrari.
I think you’re very right about that, Sam. That makes total sense. I just struggle with how they seem to get over the…I hesitate to say shameful…clandestine? nature of spending money you’ve stolen. If I was dealing with millions of dollars of money that I knew I’d stolen, I don’t know that I’d invest it or blow it. I’d be too scared of getting caught. I’d probably convert it into something hard to trace and just hide it somewhere, and then…vanish. Go someplace else and blow it somewhere where nobody knows you’re supposed to be living on an accountant’s salary.
Clearly, to work your way up to the millions-level of embezzlement, you have to be decently smart. How do you miss the obvious point that everyone around you–especially the person who you’re embezzling from–knows roughly what your salary should be?
I get the urge to blow it on a Ferrari. I don’t get how you manage to convince yourself that no one will think it’s odd that you’re driving a Ferrari.
It’s probably harder to live a double life than it used to be, but there was a woman in 1920s England who was one of the leaders of the Forty Elephants, an all-female shoplifting gang, and she spent her downtime living in a village outside London as an upper-class lady who was renting the manor-house and was beloved for her support for all the local charities. Her excuse for her frequent trips into the city was that she supposedly had an estranged husband she was trying to persuade to give up his wicked ways. I don’t know whether she claimed his name was “Bunbury.”
Mooncustafer 