Re: superhero theft and laundering

On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:03:43 -0700 (PDT), IsaacKuo <mechdan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:

>On Apr 15, 1:14 pm, Crown-Horned Snorkack <chornedsnork...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>wrote:
>> On 15 apr, 20:50, IsaacKuo <mech...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> > If you don't mind theft, then it'd be better to make oodles
>> > of money by stealing, and then use the money to buy
>> > decent stuff from fab shops.  You can steal from
>> > criminial/corrupt banana republic kleptocrats if it makes
>> > you feel better.
>
>> So long as you are stealing, your problem is that the precise sizes
>> and shapes you want may not exist, or if they happen to exist
>> somewhere, they happen to be too well protected or you simply cannot
>> find them. You have to have them fabricated, which is cheap for a
>> professional - which you are not.
>
>> Laundering stolen money could be considerably easier for an adult. But
>> if a part of the problem is that the conspirator is obviously an early
>> teenager, then it is hard to make use of stolen money.
>
>There are plenty of places in the world where people
>don't ask inconvenient questions, as long as you have
>money.  If you can easily fly to the moon, you can
>easily fly anywhere in the world.

Interesting idea, though there are problems with finding the right
place.

But for electronics (for example), I seriously doubt that even a young
kid who only speaks  English will have a lot of trouble buying
anything legal in the Akihibara in Tokyo if he or she has a large wad
of US dollars.

And farm co-ops are good for a lot of tools and stuff. Fatrmers need
to build/repair all sorts of things, and a kid their ages handing over
a list and saying "Put it on the loading dock, Pa will be by with the
truck and load it up after he gets some other stuff" isn't going to be
at all remarkable.

Paying cash will be a little odd, but not horribly so.

They stack the stuff on the dock. Kid sits on stack reading a comic
book or something. A bit later they look and the kid and stuff is
gone. They might wonder why they didn't hear the truck. But probably
not.

>> > > > Ah, that just sounds silly.  No, if I wanted a secret
>> > > > hideout for cheap, I'd just find some secluded place on
>> > > > Earth.  There are plenty of mountainside caves which
>> > > > are largely inaccessable.
>
>> But not invulnerable to a helicopter that shows up with air-to-ground
>> missiles.
>
>Yes, basically invulnerable to a helicopter that shows
>up with air-to-ground missiles.  Bin Laden survived
>Tora Bora, and that was with an ARMY of heavily
>armed helicopters, that all knew where he was,
>more or less.  And those caves were accessible on
>foot!  An attack helicopter has to first know which
>cave to shoot at, and even if it knows which one to
>shoot at the heaviest armament available are puny
>little Hellfire missiles.  (Naval helicopters have heavier
>anti-****p missiles, but they can't target land targets.)
>
>Now, a jet plane could be armed with much more
>destructive bombs, but even then it's hard to get
>damage anywhere significantly beyond the cave
>entrances.

And I'm thinking that at some point my flyer needs to have an accident
that shows her (and the reader) just *how* invulnerable she is. 

I think I'll ignore the insane odds against it and have her ram an
asteroid at speed (say on a trip to Jupiter or farther out).

Wonder what the astronomers on Earth would make of a 10 megaton
equivalent explosion in the belt (say a couple of AU from Earth)? I'm
sure they'd notice if they had something aimed that direction, but...

(I get the 10 MT from figuring a 100 kilo [flyer plus gear] impact at
10% of c)

>> > > > There are plenty of
>> > > > random islands which are rarely if ever visited.
>
>> Same objection.
>
>There are PLENTY of random islands.
>
>> Generally, a major problem is finding fences for stolen property -
>
>Real easy.  First off, any teenager should have no
>problem finding someone to buy drugs from (if he's
>too dumb to already know who the class dealers
>are, he can just ask a random street hooker).
>From the dealer, he can find out someone to buy
>stolen goods (because when addicts run out of
>money, they often get more money by stealing stuff).
>
>This stuff might not be so obvious for an adult who's
>forgotten what school was like, but any school kid
>lives in an environment full of all types.

Heck, back in the late 60s, in *junior high* I wasn't that clued in
but I knew which kid was selling **** (I don't know that we actually
*had* anybody selling drugs, the place was pretty small townish even
for being the third largest city oin the state)

Now if one of the kids was a *time traveller*, I know *exactly* how to
make money.

Just get some old coins and bills and buy the right comic books, seal
them up so the won't degrade too badly and hide them somewhere. Then
recover them in the present. "Found in the attic" will work quite
well. :-)

You might even get a bonus if you get the right coins or bills in your
change in the past. :-)