Colorful Thieves: Blue Collar vs. White Collar, Fun All Around

A playboy walks into the U.S. Bank of Jackson Hole dressed to the 9s and wearing glasses on New Year's Eve. He says he's from a Mexican gang, his cohorts are outside, and if they don't give him all their money he and the narcos are gonna turn this place into the goddamn Alamo.

The teller rounds up about $150k in cash and the man leaves. The money is nothing in a big world and, even more, it's federally insured. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and John Dillinger said, robbing a bank is robbing "the man". And amazingly enough this exact robbery happened a few months ago in my small town of Jackson, WY. This was the biggest crime most of the small-town keystone cops here had ever seen, a movie-worthy bank robbery in a town whose population is only barely higher than its elevation.

The man is caught in Sandy Utah and awaits trial. But here's the big twist - the Australian national Corey Donaldson has just said the Federal Government is too corrupt, slimey, and downright greedy to try him for any crime. Because here's the kicker - Donaldson claims he gave all the money he stole to poor people.

So nobody was hurt. No weapons were used. The minimum sentence if convicted of 2nd degree bank robbery is 5 years. No doubt he'll get much more.

Just a couple notes, the amount was $150k and it came from no citizens of the nation but actually from a pool of all citizens so the average hurt per person is in the pennies. It was just a bold, old west robbery and the robber is now pulling a whole Robin Hood act in a nation where the division between the haves and the have nots is greater and greater, a perfect such scenario.

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On the other hand, tonight "American Greed" on CNBC is doing a profile on a man named Charles Martin. Charles was the head of a company called One World Capital. He and his partner ran their company, a hedge fund which utilized the shady world of Forex trading, like a personal money supply. 

He and partner ran a ponzi scheme that swindled what amounted to $17,000,000 dollars they simply stole from about 1000 victims. Or in other words he and his partner stole $17,000 from each of 1000 people who trusted him and believed that the world of capitalism is well enough regulated that such could not happen. He was sentenced to 17 years for this - I wonder how many of these he's going to serve. An interesting fact, over a one-year period he spent over $1 million on strip clubs and restaurants. Now that's a playboy, for sure.

I have some personal experience with the man - he invested $250k in a movie I was producing starring guys like Jeremy Renner and Simon Baker. He pulled out when the spoiled trust-funder director had a poop fit over the phone about the tight strings Martin was putting on the money. I met with him a few times, including a dinner at Mastro's in which the man bought me a rare New York Strip. Or rather he said he was covering dinner so I ordered one. Then we tried to sell the hideous Tom Berenger/Busta Rhymes movies he'd invested in. Then he went to jail for running a ponzi scheme and my brief experience in film finance went belly up alongside his investors and the rest of the finance world - his downfall was just a few months behind Lehman Brothers'.

So the lesson is if you're gonna rob somebody, go big. Because you'll probably get caught. And go high-end. Low-end gets caught quickly and prosecuted intensely. A white collar thief bangs high-end strippers and drinks Cristal with his stolen money for over a year. Low end, you get $150k. High end, you get $17M. 

On the other side the low end crooks only hurt a few people, if that (violent robberies aside). High end ruins lives and destroys the dreams of aspiring young film producers.

So it goes.

- Ryan