It sure is interesting. Last week's episode, I was impressed the guy had connections with a FBI agent.
American Greed is a great show. It's amazing these guys get away with the degree of fraud they do with so many ways to slip up and big brother" watching. I'm waiting for the Team Trading/Velez/Vacaro episode of the show!
This Marcus guy was an idiot. He was doomed to fail with his switching method. Now I would like to see a guy who gets away with it and lives happily ever after... One can have a plastic surgery in Indonesia for 10K or less, and getting fake papers isn't that hard either...
There was this Greek American up in New York named Angelo Haligiannis. He's escaped prison (so far) because he fled before sentencing to Greece and they've refused to extradite him back because of his grandparents being Greek. I can't find any new information on his status but the Greek authorities rearrested him in Sept 2009 so I don't know if he will get away from it for much longer. His story is an interesting read... http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/23171/ Probably the most successful I can remember though is Whitey Bulger, the Boston gangster who fled several years ago. Apparently he had been planning his run for years before and had cash stashed in dozens of banks around the world and had multiple ids ready to go. He also had millions of dollars at his disposal and time to plan. He is on the ten most wanted FBI list and has manged to elude capture for almost 15 years. No small feat.
I remember the story. The wife went after him to Greece and ex-investors tracked him down there. I think it is dangerous to live in the open after pissing off/scamming so many people. He actually did that to relatives... If somebody steals millions from me and I know where he lives, I would probably drop by for a chat... P.S.: Marcus' investors got their money back from an insurance company. I saw the documentary on him. But he was a gangster, I was thinking more of the line of investing scams. The surprising thing is with these scammers (Bernie too) that they don't really have a back up plan or if they do they can't follow through with it successfully...
Yeah, I have wondered the same thing... why white collar criminals don't plan their escape better (or at all). They come up with clever ways to steal money and then don't even have the foresight to plan their escape. If you are going to be a criminal you might as well go all the way and do it right...