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Comment by eskatonic | Hacker News Reader

How... how did he think this was going to turn out? You fake your death, then run to mommy & daddy's house, and hope no one finds you? And just keep the cash?

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Criminals, by and large, are stupid. They don't think it through. They just do stuff.

Most people who worry about silly little details such as "consequences" don't go into crime.

Criminals that are caught are stupid.

Survivorship bias because you can only observe the ones that are caught. I'm sure plenty of criminals have successfully faked their deaths.

Lots of criminals that are smart get caught, because even smart people fuck up sometime. When some smart guy fucks up at his e-commerce site probably there just has to be a code rollback and maybe a talking to, if a smart criminal fucks up it's probably the cops come calling.

A cop once told me "Criminals almost always get caught because of probability. The vast majority of criminals don't commit just one crime, so chances are, they will eventually get caught. To never get caught, they have to get lucky every time. I only need to get lucky once."

You met a cop who actually catches criminals? Joking aside, probability works both ways and if the police don't actually do anything about crime, low level theft etc then those criminals will never get caught.

you don't do anything about low level theft because you will catch those criminals in the act at some point, rather than investigating after the fact which takes lots of resources, and then the system will take into account that most criminals have committed many crimes before being caught.

I don’t think anyone has a lot of experience faking their own death. How good at you at doing anything really complicated for the first time?

Doubt it is plenty. Because it either means you need to fly under the radar for the rest of your life (never cross borders, never be stopped, never use a bank account etc) or you need to manage to create a new identity which in itself is not very easy.

> Criminals, by and large, are stupid. They don't think it through. They just do stuff.

I guess the typical reply is that we mostly know about the stupid ones who get caught. But it would depend on the crime types, I guess. With some crimes, if the person is really meticulous and clever, chances are also they probably managed to make their business legitimate, like they just become a politician, and get their gains from lobbying and writing "books" instead of running cryptocoin scams.

Jacques Philippa, a member of the SS, spent 29 years in the attic of his parents after the second world war to escape his death penalty. He was only found out because his mother died and elderly father could no longer take care of him.

It seems the main difference is that Philippa spent most of this timed confined to the attic rather than just walk around outside assuming no one would find him. Or trading his crypto assuming no one would notice.

Kind of an amazing story by the way, but not many resources available about it in English. But for those who can speak Dutch there's e.g. https://meitotmei.nl/zoldernazi-jacques-philippa-begon-zijn-... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQceZ5O2oog

Not every crime is planned to the last detail. We had a guy in our village who tried to rob a bank and got arrested by the bank's employees.

There's not planning a crime to the last detail, then there's faking your death without even thinking about how you're going to keep people from finding out that you're not dead.

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