If you're going to steal money... (reprise)

Before we begin let us make it perfectly clear that the GNU Public Dictatorship is not suggesting that you begin a life of crime. In fact, when we are fully empowered we will not tolerate such lawless behavior. In the meantime, however, we would like to give you some pointers on how to steal money while you can. We previously advocated carefully choosing the amount you will steal to be either very high or very low, and we believe this is still sound advice. We believe a review of a couple of recent news reports will provide additional sound advice. We'll first look at one who stole obscenely large amounts and another who stole small amounts over time.

First we will consider the case of a woman in charge of finances at a woodworking shop stealing US $9.9 million to build herself a very fancy closet. She would routinely spend US $24,000 on a weekly basis, using company funds to cover the expenses. She was caught when American Express told the company that she was using the company's checks to pay off her credit card bill.

On the positive side, this woman used her position of trust to get very rich, and because of the way she used the money all that the company could recover was around US $2 million (a net gain of US $7.9 million). She was also able to enjoy the TV in her closet for quite some time before being caught.

On the negative side, has this woman ever heard of laundering money? If the trail had been less obvious from the company's coffers to her credit card account she might have been able to go on stealing, and who knows, she might have been able to put a whole surround sound system in her closet.

One more thing about this woman is that somehow her husband escaped suspicion of wrongdoing. How, we can only guess. He must have known that her designer closet wasn't being purchased using their own funds, but then again, maybe she managed the finances at home and at work and never told him the price of her shoes and handbags.

Our second illustrative example will be taken from this report, but we won't talk about the Fishers, as they were the ones having money stolen from them. We'll focus instead on the "lucky" neighbors who saw their utility bill shrink as they consumed more and more gas. They obviously feigned innocence and got away with nearly US $2,000 worth of free energy.

In this case the careful planning of the "lucky" family allowed them to live it up with free energy while their neighbors paid the bill. They may not have known who was paying the bill, but they certainly knew it wasn't them. They followed the first axiom of stealing money, which, as we all know, is to not draw attention to yourself. They didn't throw any "see how warm I can keep my house" parties or anything.

We hope this review of these cases has been instructive and that you will either avoid a life of crime or at least do it cleverly.