Arrest-Proof Yourself (28 page)

Internet specialists

database specialists

computer technicians

data-recovery technicians

encryption/decryption technicians

liaisons to Interpol and federal and state law enforcement

undercover investigators and
^“
sting
^”
operations specialists

many more
ordinary detectives

All of this is not—repeat
not
—to encourage you to aspire to be a middle-class crook. The point is to emphasize that cops are massively deployed to catch you at the less sophisticated things you’re likely to be up to—carrying weed; driving with a suspended license or expired tag; drinking in public; running from cops; fighting with women; failing to appear at court hearings, probation meetings, and drug court; violating parole; and so forth. Cops often aren’t even looking for middle-class crooks laundering money; distributing kiddie porn; and perpetrating insurance, mortgage, and Medicare fraud.

No doubt this gets you steamed. You’re hassled by cops right and left, stopped, searched, questioned, and annoyed while all these evil, middle-class perps are stealing money hand over fist with nary a cop around to even slow them down. Their insurance frauds and crapola lawsuits push up the cost of automobile insurance so you can barely afford to drive street legal. Maybe you can’t even buy car insurance right now and have to drive outlaw until the next few paychecks. Sweating bullets every time a cop pulls up on your rear bumper and runs your tag on his onboard computer is no way to live.

The system isn’t fair. It’s just there. What shoulda, coulda, oughta, mighta been is not your problem. Your challenge is to arrest-proof yourself. Want to do something good for America? Stay free. Take a clue here.

I’ll close this chapter with a fictional portrait of a master criminal. Note that the biggest criminals have many of the qualities that bring success in the straight world: intelligence, discipline, persistence, and savvy. They are not clueless. This portrait conflates several actual people in Jacksonville and Miami. I’ve added a dash of James Bond supercriminal as well. Most mid- and high-level drug dealers aren’t this smart. They compensate for lack of IQ by blowing out the brains of people who annoy them, such as their attorneys. Details are changed so that the authors of this book don’t have to worry about getting bumped off.
¹¹

SCENARIO #6

CHEMICAL MAN

Our subject, “the chemist,” is in his 40s, the holder of a master’s degree in chemistry from a prestigious university. He manufactures a high grade of methamphetamine (“crank”) that is sold on the streets under the name crystal lightning. Most manufacturers deliver meth to distributors, who then dilute it for sale at wildly varying dosages with anything from baby powder to laundry detergent. The chemist dilutes his drug with an inert powder, and then packages a pure product, with a standard dosage, in plastic bags with a distinctive lightning flash label. The stuff is wildly popular, since addicts know they can get a good high without being poisoned. The chemist’s distributors are similarly upbeat about the product, which arrives packaged and ready to sell and which relieves them of the dangerous chore of “stepping on” the drugs. (To increase profits, street dealers adulterate, or “step on,” drugs with any cheap powder they can get their hands on. They have a distressing tendency to use stuff they grab from the kitchen, like Draino, laundry detergent, and rat poison.)

The chemist lives in a luxurious home, and regularly entertains at tasteful dinners presided over by his fashionable girlfriend. They travel together frequently to resorts and spas. On business, of course, he travels by himself.

The chemist has built his enterprise with care. He manufactures his drugs alone and forgoes opportunities to expand in order to avoid the risk of assistants. He moves his lab equipment frequently among warehouses leased under fictitious names and paid for in cash. For business he switches from his personal cars to an ever-changing variety of beaters purchased for cash, then legally insured and tagged. He has never been stopped by police while driving and has never received a traffic ticket.

He has several distributors, none of whom know each other. The chemist never personally delivers drugs or receives money. All sales and payments occur through prearranged drops and electronic transfers to banks. He rarely uses telephones, and never uses mail or computers for business. On the occasions when he meets personally with distributors, he does so one on one, without witnesses, in steam rooms, hot tubs, or on the beach, where bugs, wires, and parabolic microphones are less effective. Outdoors he invariably wears sunglasses and wide-brimmed hats so that he cannot be reliably identified from photographs or surveillance tapes. None of his distributors knows his identity or where he lives.

His minimal financial records are maintained by an accountant and an attorney in a foreign country in the name of several shell corporations. His reported income, which appears in the form of dividends from securities and equities held in offshore accounts, is ample to support his lifestyle. Taxes are paid punctiliously. His girlfriend has no idea he is a criminal; she thinks their lifestyle is funded by investments.

On one occasion police became aware of his operation. After a tip-off from a warehouse manager, they obtained a search warrant and raided his lab. The police were unlucky in their timing. They discovered only the precursors of his drug, all of which, like ammonia, are legal chemicals. Traces of methamphetamine discovered on the meticulously washed glassware proved, after analysis, too minute to support criminal charges. There were no labels or packaging materials discovered, no fingerprints anywhere in the warehouse, and no particles of skin or hair to yield DNA. Police theorize that the chemist used latex gloves, even to open doors, and disposable “clean room” suits, caps, and booties to avoid leaving biological traces.