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Comment by quartesixte | Hacker News Reader

3750 for committing serious crimes seems so low, one can only imagine the desperation or lack of value understanding involved with participants.

Or coercion.

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I think it’s pretty simple. To many people, $3,750 is a huge amount of money. It’s easily several months salary.

I think a lot of people would be relatively unaware of how illegal a given thing is and would instead see the amount of money being offered as representative of the risk. Too much and they would get suspicious.

This was the UK. I don’t think $4k is “many months salary” for a lot of people in the UK.

It's certainly the case in the US for many people, why would it not be in the UK?

Even at effective minimum wage of 11.80 an hour[1], that’s only 2 months of salary. That’s not life altering in any way and wouldn’t be worth prison time to people in general. People have to have been tricked about the risks or were coerced.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...

People on minimum wage don’t get a chance to build savings are probably living month to month. Though it’s not an earth shattering of money it is meaningful to a lot of people.

Further to the same point, there's a cost of living crisis in the UK, so many people even above minimum wage are having to use food banks.

I can easily believe someone in such a position would jump (well, politely queue, they are British) at a chance for a "mere" few thousand.

Because we have a national minimum wage which works out to over 2k once converted in to USD.

Even at the minimum legal level and without a raft of government hands outs which a person could expect its maybe 6-7 weeks salary.

If we take the average salary then take home per month is pocket change short of $3000

The "kia boys" are out stealing car after car for $100 from interviews online.

Incentives seem lower than we all think?

> Incentives seem lower than we all think?

The income for most criminals is a pittance. [1]

1. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-apr-24-oe-dubne...

Sometimes they don't even get/want the $100 and just joyride until they run out of gas to post the footage on social media.

I remember some very sad news about a drug smuggler, a poor woman from the Philippines, condemned to an insanely harsh sentence in Singapore (perhaps even death penalty?). At least, the UK justice system should be less cruel.

One?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapor...

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