1994-07-26 - Re: crime and snitches

Header Data

From: pjm@gasco.com (Patrick J. May)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 7d5ee185ea33da0578e1b447c1f5e51cab4d0439f631ec85a273424f0ffd8956
Message ID: <m0qSqve-0004nQC@roslyn.gasco.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1994-07-26 18:09:08 UTC
Raw Date: Tue, 26 Jul 94 11:09:08 PDT

Raw message

From: pjm@gasco.com (Patrick J. May)
Date: Tue, 26 Jul 94 11:09:08 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: crime and snitches
Message-ID: <m0qSqve-0004nQC@roslyn.gasco.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Berzerk writes:
>>> ABSOLUTELY!  The fact is if you can't get someone to snitch, IT IS NOT A
>>> CRIME (morally)!  I dare anyone to come up with a counterexample.
>>      If you were limiting your assertion to crime over the net, I
>> suggest that the long, interesting history of confidence men is a
>> refutation.  Done correctly, in many cases the victim doesn't even
>> know he has been conned.
> Then have they?  Can you give an example?

     I recently moved to Portland, OR (any cypherpunks up here?), and
haven't yet unpacked all my books, but from memory one variation used
in the movie "Grifters" is:

     - Convince the mark that you have an undetectable method
       to make money from the stock market that, while technically
       illegal, "won't hurt anyone".

     - Get seed money from the mark to run the scam.

     - Stage a bust by the police and allow the mark to escape.

     - The mark feels lucky to have gotten away, the front man
       and faux police split the money.

It shouldn't be too hard to come up with ways of doing this on the
net, given ecash and the rest of the infrastructure.

Regards,

Patrick May
pjm@gasco.com





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