Ask HN: Does becoming rich make you a target for criminals? - hoodoof
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patio11
Define rich and define criminal. In the United States, any fair reading of the
stats indicates that being poor makes you a target for criminals.

Kidnapping for ransom does not exist in the United States. (That statement
sounds like an exaggeration, but look it up -- the FBI basically exists to
solve kidnapping and it does it with extreme prejudice. [+])

If you e.g. sell a startup for $20 million and suddenly have a very large
balance in your checking account, you may have the experience of having to
suddenly become radically more sophisticated with regards to a number of white
collar threat vectors, some of which are formally criminalized and many of
which are not.

One example of many: you will suddenly have many people attempt to involve you
in real estate deals with high-above-market returns and no risk. This
successfully transfers hundreds of millions a year from people who happen to
have money (including those who might not ping HN's radar as rich -- retirees
are at particular risk) to a combination of scammers and, well, real estate
speculators who just happened to misunderestimate their chance of failure.

Some friends/social acquaintances of mine can relate a number of not-very-fun
experiences here, none of which involve consummated victimization but at least
a few of which require costly ongoing defensive efforts.

[+] Edit: I looked it up, and contrary to my expectations the nationwide
incidence of kidnapping-for-ransom is a non-zero number (on the order of two
dozen a year nationwide). My prior expectation was, literally, zero.

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Mz
Presumably so. But I suspect a bigger problem is "I've got dozens of friends
and the fun never ends -- that is as long as I'm buying." This is probably a
huge root cause of classism. They don't want to be around people with less
than them because everyone puts the pinch on them. Think about: with 7 billion
people on the planet, a billionaire cannot even give a dollar to everyone on
the planet before he is broke. I don't care how rich you are, there are limits
to how much you can give. There is no limit to how much other people can try
to demand.

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codeonfire
Of course. That's why all billionaires have to spend lots of money for 24x7
personal security. Some people look at super yachts and private jets and think
it's about decadence, but some of it is about not having your location known
to most of the world for long periods of time.

