It sounds stupid because you don't hear about the guy who got away with it.
That is exactly the sort of reasoning that criminals use themselves. There's always some great heist/scam/whatever that will get them The Big One. Then they get caught and sent to prison again.
I am curious as to WTF these guys think when they start pulling stunts like this, however. I mean, if you're gonna flirt with PMITA Prison time, you'd best be damned smart about it, do at least some research, and get your shit planned in advance...
Most white collar-type criminals are driven by a mixture of vanity, self-entitlement and adolescent delusions of invincibility and superiority to the common herd.
So it's not hard to see why they get such support on slashdot.
Lets see. Invest 4 years of your life to get several million dollars. I think there are a large number of people that would take that deal just to support their families.
You are assuming that this self-entitled minor criminal is also some sort of financial genius who has salted away those millions he stole in cunningly hidden, untraceable offshore investments or something. That is not impossible, but it is hardly likely.
I know I did, and $1-2m is a lifetime's worth of pay...if he has access to that money after he gets out, that's a damn good deal, he'll never have to work again, or could have many options for starting his own business if he wants to.
Do you really think that the authorities worked out he stole 4.5m USD and just said "oh well, guess he must have spent it all, never mind"?
And yet you are likely to give up far more than 4 years of your life for far less money.
You don't give up ALL your life to your work unless you're an idiot. You have to make a compromise between spending a certain amount of time doing something you'd rather not and living an even more miserable life by being poor.
Anyone over about fourteen who thinks that working for a living is the same as being in prison is just...ignorant.
What retards like you don't seem able to comprehend is that getting a degree in philosophy doesn't mean you have committed your life to sitting on a fucking pillar contemplating the universe, any more than getting a degree in English means you feel entitled to spend the rest of your life writing poetry while being hand fed caviare by oiled houris.
Getting a degree in anything just proves you are intelligent, organised and motivated enough to learn how to study up to a certain level, which employers find useful as a way of sorting out people who are likely to be intelligent, organised and motivated at work.
College or university is not a fucking job training scheme, like going to do a course in car mechanics or something.
convicted felons can get jobs... they have to have in-demand skill sets
The point is that unless they are some sort of super genius specialised rocket surgeon (or something), there will always be at least one other person with the same in-demand skill sets but no conviction for theft/fraud, and it's hard to argue that away just by being good at the HR interview.
He got millions of dollars and a great lifestyle for years and now he basicaly got free home and free meals for a number of years.
Plus he'll probably have more sex than he's ever had in his life, and he's practically guaranteed a great job when he gets out. Clearly, it's a win-win for him.
Why make him work somewhere for minimum wage? - that is stupidly inefficient. He should be made to work somewhere for the maximum his skills can demand - so that the debt he owes can be repaid sooner. The quicker the repayment, the less harm the theft will cause.
Er, I think the idea is that the criminal only gets minimum wage and the excess is used to pay off the debt. Obviously, if the guy is living in society he has to have some money for food, shelter, clothes etc. I think what you would actually do is work out the bare minimum needed and give him that at a flat rate each week, with no extra for entertainment or whatever.
Woosh to you I would say. GP is making the point that, yes, we do indeed have non-jail alternatives to punishing crime, it's just that anyone who recommends them is branded as soft on crime, over-liberal, and so on.
Agree fully. Why put people like this in jail? Put them in indentured servitude instead. He could be put to work in a homeless shelter, making minimum wage. That way he can pay for his own upkeep AND be a benefit for society.
You could say the same for any criminal. Even violent criminals like murderers could be allowed to avoid jail by doing useful work instead, as long as they were closely monitored.
It's amusing here on slashdot how as soon as a crime becomes computer related, everyone starts getting all "there but for the grace of God go I" prison-reformy, where otherwise it's all about shooting the perps dead like rabid dogs.
You have to be joking, and either way it is not the robbers fault if someone is so sensitive that 60 seconds with a complete stranger who never touches them can lead to permanent psychological damage; They were going to live a horrible life no matter what.
Quite how anyone who is capable of turning on a computer, connecting to the internet, setting up a slashdot account, and writing in sentences can be so moronic is hard to fathom.
There are a lot of shades of grey between the white of perfect innocence and the black of deliberate evil..
Punching someone in the stomach and taking a few quid in cash may be hugely less damaging than stealing all their money in a fraud and bankrupting them
People who have been burgled are often severely traumatised too. If a member of your family steals from you, it can destroy your trust in other human beings . And so on.
It is very dangerous to start labelling some crimes as victimless.
And how is a non-technical user supposed to differentiate between this scam and the warnings from the McAfee/Norton anti-virus bollocksware that came with a 1 month's trial subscription on their shiny new computer?
If there were enough technically ignorant people using Linux, it would happen in the same way. The whole point of this scam is that is social engineering, it's not like writing a system-specific virus.
It's like phishing attacks, it really makes no difference which bank or software you use, if you're prepared to reveal your account details and login information to a stranger on the phone/by email, you're fucked anyway.
Tell me it was that god damn MyFuckingCleanPC (a.k.a. MySlowPieceOfShitPC) company that got busted...
PULLEEEZZZZEE!
LOL I haven't seen the MyFuckingCleanPC shill/troll recently on here. I found some of his tales quite heartwarming, although he did tend to spoil the endings by rattling on about Windows crapware.
That was the scam: to persuade me to buy some worthless software. Beyond that there was no damage.
And the reason for that is that selling the software isn't in itself a crime. It doesn't do any good, but like the tiger-repelling rock in the Simpsons, you never get bothered by whatever it was it was supposed to clean up.
But remotely accessing a computer and destroying information/causing damage is certainly a crime in many places in the world.
I used to be angry at them, but in the end it was $$$ for me. Getting rid of scareware etc was a job for me too.
Cool, so really they were just one big privately run job creation scheme that cost no one anything and contributed to the growth of the economy. Oh, wait...
Slashdot Mirror
He gets 4 years in a Fed pen for contributing to the economy??
Something wrong here.
Yes, and when some teenager mugs and hospitalises an old lady, he's contributing to the economy by providing work for nurses.
Fuck me you're a retard.
There have been several embezzlement cases locally and that's what I always say; "What the hell were they thinking"
Like most criminals they were thinking they wouldn't get caught.
It sounds stupid because you don't hear about the guy who got away with it.
That is exactly the sort of reasoning that criminals use themselves. There's always some great heist/scam/whatever that will get them The Big One. Then they get caught and sent to prison again.
I am curious as to WTF these guys think when they start pulling stunts like this, however. I mean, if you're gonna flirt with PMITA Prison time, you'd best be damned smart about it, do at least some research, and get your shit planned in advance...
Most white collar-type criminals are driven by a mixture of vanity, self-entitlement and adolescent delusions of invincibility and superiority to the common herd.
So it's not hard to see why they get such support on slashdot.
Lets see. Invest 4 years of your life to get several million dollars. I think there are a large number of people that would take that deal just to support their families.
You are assuming that this self-entitled minor criminal is also some sort of financial genius who has salted away those millions he stole in cunningly hidden, untraceable offshore investments or something. That is not impossible, but it is hardly likely.
I know I did, and $1-2m is a lifetime's worth of pay...if he has access to that money after he gets out, that's a damn good deal, he'll never have to work again, or could have many options for starting his own business if he wants to.
Do you really think that the authorities worked out he stole 4.5m USD and just said "oh well, guess he must have spent it all, never mind"?
And yet you are likely to give up far more than 4 years of your life for far less money.
You don't give up ALL your life to your work unless you're an idiot. You have to make a compromise between spending a certain amount of time doing something you'd rather not and living an even more miserable life by being poor.
Anyone over about fourteen who thinks that working for a living is the same as being in prison is just...ignorant.
With the money he stole he won't need a job. If he can invest (i.e. the money isn't buried in a skull island), he'll have much more when he's out.
Yes, I'm sure no one bothered trying to trace where the money had gone when they calculated the fucking restitutions he has to pay.
What retards like you don't seem able to comprehend is that getting a degree in philosophy doesn't mean you have committed your life to sitting on a fucking pillar contemplating the universe, any more than getting a degree in English means you feel entitled to spend the rest of your life writing poetry while being hand fed caviare by oiled houris.
Getting a degree in anything just proves you are intelligent, organised and motivated enough to learn how to study up to a certain level, which employers find useful as a way of sorting out people who are likely to be intelligent, organised and motivated at work.
College or university is not a fucking job training scheme, like going to do a course in car mechanics or something.
convicted felons can get jobs... they have to have in-demand skill sets
The point is that unless they are some sort of super genius specialised rocket surgeon (or something), there will always be at least one other person with the same in-demand skill sets but no conviction for theft/fraud, and it's hard to argue that away just by being good at the HR interview.
Sigh, reading fail.
He scammed 4.5 million, so he'll retire to the Cayman Islands with the 1-2 million they couldn't account for or take back from him.
As long as he wasn't a total moron at least.
He got caught and sent to prison, of course he's a total moron.
He is a living proof that crime pays.
He got millions of dollars and a great lifestyle for years and now he basicaly got free home and free meals for a number of years.
Plus he'll probably have more sex than he's ever had in his life, and he's practically guaranteed a great job when he gets out. Clearly, it's a win-win for him.
You really are a fucking retard.
Why make him work somewhere for minimum wage? - that is stupidly inefficient. He should be made to work somewhere for the maximum his skills can demand - so that the debt he owes can be repaid sooner. The quicker the repayment, the less harm the theft will cause.
Er, I think the idea is that the criminal only gets minimum wage and the excess is used to pay off the debt. Obviously, if the guy is living in society he has to have some money for food, shelter, clothes etc. I think what you would actually do is work out the bare minimum needed and give him that at a flat rate each week, with no extra for entertainment or whatever.
Woosh to you I would say. GP is making the point that, yes, we do indeed have non-jail alternatives to punishing crime, it's just that anyone who recommends them is branded as soft on crime, over-liberal, and so on.
Agree fully. Why put people like this in jail? Put them in indentured servitude instead. He could be put to work in a homeless shelter, making minimum wage. That way he can pay for his own upkeep AND be a benefit for society.
You could say the same for any criminal. Even violent criminals like murderers could be allowed to avoid jail by doing useful work instead, as long as they were closely monitored.
It's amusing here on slashdot how as soon as a crime becomes computer related, everyone starts getting all "there but for the grace of God go I" prison-reformy, where otherwise it's all about shooting the perps dead like rabid dogs.
The end result was that the hard working IT guys had a big piss-up for free
You appear to have misspelled "self-entitled, dishonest fuckbags"
"never recover [from an armed robbery]"
You have to be joking, and either way it is not the robbers fault if someone is so sensitive that 60 seconds with a complete stranger who never touches them can lead to permanent psychological damage; They were going to live a horrible life no matter what.
Quite how anyone who is capable of turning on a computer, connecting to the internet, setting up a slashdot account, and writing in sentences can be so moronic is hard to fathom.
There are a lot of shades of grey between the white of perfect innocence and the black of deliberate evil..
Punching someone in the stomach and taking a few quid in cash may be hugely less damaging than stealing all their money in a fraud and bankrupting them
People who have been burgled are often severely traumatised too. If a member of your family steals from you, it can destroy your trust in other human beings . And so on.
It is very dangerous to start labelling some crimes as victimless.
And how is a non-technical user supposed to differentiate between this scam and the warnings from the McAfee/Norton anti-virus bollocksware that came with a 1 month's trial subscription on their shiny new computer?
If there were enough technically ignorant people using Linux, it would happen in the same way. The whole point of this scam is that is social engineering, it's not like writing a system-specific virus.
It's like phishing attacks, it really makes no difference which bank or software you use, if you're prepared to reveal your account details and login information to a stranger on the phone/by email, you're fucked anyway.
Tell me it was that god damn MyFuckingCleanPC (a.k.a. MySlowPieceOfShitPC) company that got busted...
PULLEEEZZZZEE!
LOL I haven't seen the MyFuckingCleanPC shill/troll recently on here. I found some of his tales quite heartwarming, although he did tend to spoil the endings by rattling on about Windows crapware.
That was the scam: to persuade me to buy some worthless software. Beyond that there was no damage.
And the reason for that is that selling the software isn't in itself a crime. It doesn't do any good, but like the tiger-repelling rock in the Simpsons, you never get bothered by whatever it was it was supposed to clean up.
But remotely accessing a computer and destroying information/causing damage is certainly a crime in many places in the world.
They called here two nights ago. We're an Apple-only household, so I just said "I'm sorry, you have the wrong number and hung up."
You threw a double 6 and cast the Spell of Smugness. Congratulations.
I used to be angry at them, but in the end it was $$$ for me. Getting rid of scareware etc was a job for me too.
Cool, so really they were just one big privately run job creation scheme that cost no one anything and contributed to the growth of the economy. Oh, wait...