
Man who stole $1M bucket of gold details escape from US - gscott
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/NYC-Gold-Bucket-Heist-Armored-Truck-1-Million-Dollars-Fugitive-Thief-Speaks-472147013.html
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jgh
I'm no criminal genius or anything but as a monday morning quarterback here i
feel like he got too many people involved and screwed himself. Fencing the
gold you can't do much about I guess but if you're able to just do it and
gtfo. Don't go around giving people money to go on a road trip to LA with you.
Don't give your shady-ass girlfriend the money to hold onto. Take it with you
and ditch the car on the border and walk across to Mexico. And what's he
telling everyone in ecuador he stole $1.6m in gold for anyway? Sounds like the
guy's lucky he got caught and never received the money.

~~~
prawn
How likely would it be that you could get that quantity over the border going
South? Is luggage checked?

Assuming they could identify him from camera footage, he'd have limited
options to keep an existing car or buy a car and stay in the US? It'd be a
risk even buying a car in a friend's name.

Best bet might be to forgo a car, rent somewhere remote and informally with
cash, and sit tight for a while.

~~~
sjg007
The Mexicans would've stopped him. That's why he didn't take the money with
him. In his case he would've need to do a reverse coyote which I am going to
guess is basically impossible with $1.2m. A boat to Cuba maybe with a flight
but otherwise impossible. His best chance outside of friends or family was
bitcoin.

~~~
daveguy
Yikes. Bitcoin: the best for illegal transactions. That's not a positive
attribute.

~~~
atwebb
Might be a good thing for bitcoin (heh) if that surprises you. That was pretty
much it's public face for a long time thanks to the Silk Road and various
mainstream pieces about money laundering.

~~~
daveguy
Actually it doesn't surprise me that much. Parents asked when bitcoin was
around 10k on the way up if they should invest. I told them there will
probably be value for a while because it is a money laundering Mecca, but
definitely risky. For a while (up to 19k+) I thought I might have burned
significant tech trust.

~~~
celticninja
money laundering via bitcoin, is overhyped and not as much of an issue as
people make out. cash is always going to be king.

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rosege
When I travelled through South America quite extensively I found the
Ecquadorians were much more brazen about theft than people in some other
countries. The moment I wasnt looking at a bag when on a bus they were going
through it. I had an old laptop stolen while asleep even though the bag was
right at my feet - think they must have come under the chair somehow - though
they missed the cash in there. The next time I was on a bus I put my backpack
above my head - the only thing in it was some spare batteries for the laptop -
I just wanted to see if it would happen on this bus too - and sure enough it
did - I could see them trying to be sly about it - but I just let them have
those since they werent any good to me now anyway.

~~~
totalZero
Depends where you go, and how you act. In the Amazon part of the country and
in Galapagos, it's hard to find crime, but in Guayaquil, it's sometimes
unavoidable.

Many Ecuadorian people are comfortable about stealing from Americans, or
ripping them off, and there's a sense of "these Americans won't miss it."
Partly, this idea is imposed by the government, which charges different prices
for some services (including airfare) to Europeans, Canadians and Americans.
I've encountered (and sometimes lost money to) attempted ripoffs by taxi
drivers, laundry services, restaurants, and even a surgeon.

Yet I haven't had much stuff stolen from me in Ecuador, and in fact a local
acquaintance felt so bad to see me lose the only item that was stolen, she
bought me a replacement.

~~~
chatmasta
> and there's a sense of "these Americans won't miss it."

To be fair, they’re probably right. Besides, if you’re traveling in Central
America with any more than the bare necessities, you deserve to get robbed. At
least you should assume all your belongings could be taken from you at any
time.

~~~
pc86
TIL traveling within a huge multicultural region of the world with anything
more than a single change of clothes and a toothbrush means I _deserve_ to get
robbed.

~~~
psyc
Typically when someone says you "deserve" such a thing, they mean "you will
learn a hard lesson." They aren't impugning your morals, but your judgment.

~~~
pc86
GP replied after you, they definitely mean morally.

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anonytrary
It's funny how the reporters call this "the crime of a lifetime" when billion-
dollar crimes run rampant in Wall Street and crypto (Enron, Bitconnect, etc.).

I suppose a few million dollars is enough to guarantee a lifetime of middle-
class living. Maybe that's what they meant.

~~~
5555624
Or maybe they mean a "physical" robbery. How often does someone physically
walk away with over a million dollars? IN gold, jewels, currency, etc.?

~~~
anonytrary
Yeah I was overthinking it. They definitely meant the average period of this
happening was about a lifetime, i.e. what you said.

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narvind
What are the odds, that the fiancee story is fake and he's diverting the
world's attention again, now that he has served time?

Maybe he did receive the bitcoin...

That'd be the bonus point after touchdown.

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drak0n1c
Julio Nivelo was a convicted felon prior to this crime and deported four
times. Four times! Obviously something is broken. Perhaps improving border
security isn't such a bad idea?

~~~
chatmasta
You hear stories like this all the time, it’s absurd. He was able to enter
subsequent times because he used other people’s passports. Wtf?? Why is CBP
taking pictures of our face, scans of our retinas, and fingerprints every time
we cross the border, if they can’t even use that data to identify a felon
coming into the country under a different name??

Sometimes I’m concerned about dragnet surveillance and the police state, but
then I realize how incompetent the government is at doing its job. Honestly
that might be the scarier part than the surveillance...

~~~
onnoonno
If you behave lawful, you'll create one single tracking history for
_everything_ tied to your real life person. If you don't, you apparently can
get away with stuff like that AND on top of that you won't create a single,
coherent stream of data for big brother.

These are fucked up incentives.

~~~
chatmasta
That’s a good point. Surveillance is more likely to result in false positive
identification of law abiding citizens than of criminals, simply due to higher
availability of data.

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jacquesm
It's hilarious how he's upset that his fiance apparently stole the money from
him, did he forget that it was never his to begin with?

~~~
megablast
Is it the same? Someone you know and trust, is different to him stealing from
someone he has no idea about, and is likely a rich company or corporation.

~~~
jacquesm
There is a nice proverb about this: 'there is no honor among thieves'. Besides
that, the guy could easily be lying about the whole thing.

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sebastian
The story in not over yet. He should sell the rights of his story for a movie
and make the 1.2m back, only this time, the legit way.

~~~
giarc
Not a lawyer here but would that fall under "profiting from the proceeds of
crime"?

This article from Australia suggests it's illegal in that country, I wonder if
it's the same in the US.

>Orders may also be made to seize the proceeds of the commercial exploitation
of a person’s notoriety from criminal offending, literary or otherwise (but
often described as “literary proceeds”).

[http://theconversation.com/explainer-how-proceeds-of-
crime-l...](http://theconversation.com/explainer-how-proceeds-of-crime-law-
works-in-australia-78600)

~~~
colejohnson66
OJ Simpson wrote “(If) I Did It” and made money off that

~~~
totalZero
I believe he was taken to court by the father of Ron Goldman, who won rights
to the book. I'm not too familiar with the circumstances arouns the case,
though, so this doesn't necessarily refute the idea that OJ could potentially
have profited.

~~~
dagw
My understanding was that Goldman initially won a lien on the profits from the
book, since Simpson owed Goldman money from the civil suit, and later the
Goldman's where handed the book rights by the bankruptcy courts, when OJ
failed to pay his debts.

So in theory OJ could have profited if he didn't also, independently, owe the
Goldman's a lot of money.

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Spearchucker
He had no strategy. Weirdly. Because he said he told himself he'd have a
chance at one of those buckets some day. In which case I'd have expected he'd
have thought of an exit. Some kind of plan to leave the country, maybe even a
contingency, in _case_ he ever struck it rich.

Surely, it you choose a life of crime, you'd do that anyway? Kind of a burn
the bridges get out fast plan, for when things go wrong. Which they will,
eventually.

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tty7
We should start a gofundme for him, what a horrible fiance!

~~~
scoggs
I can't believe this guy has the nuts to act like he deserves a lick of
sympathy. Nuts. I don't know what's worse, him acting that way or a news
channel glorifying his actions. What a strange world we live in.

I know we live in a world where this guy is going to make a better, more
clickable story than somebody finding and returning somebody's purse but where
do we draw the line. I guess if it weren't such a large quantity of gold plus
being stolen from an armored vehicle in broad daylight it might have been seen
as more of a terrible crime. As it stands it's almost more laughable that he
was able to pull it off than anything. The dude was such an idiotic thief
after he actually got away with the goods that there is a story in that
itself.

~~~
joemi
I'm not arguing that his actions should necessarily be glorified, but I'm
completely unsurprised that they were, and I think there are some very clear
reasons why (beyond just saying it'll get clicks):

\- First, I'm sure many people view it as a "robbing the rich" type situation,
and it was completely non-violent. Those gold bars certainly were not from
some small business owner making his nightly deposits. With economic disparity
such as it is these days, I'm not surprised at all that people would find that
amusing and root for the criminal in this case. (Of course, the problem with
such "robbing the rich" situations is that the rich often recoup their losses
at the expense of the not-rich. But many people either don't know or don't
think about that when they see a "rob the rich" situation.)

\- Also, it was a pretty brazen broad daylight robbery itself, due to the
weight of the gold, and the video of it was pretty amusing to watch, with all
the effort and breaks needed.

\- Finally, this story is from an local NYC news channel, and NYC is the US
metro area with the most Ecuadorians, by a long shot. That is not to say that
Ecuadorians should or do necessarily feel pride when following this story, but
it's at least a local (to a subset of NYC) interest piece because of his
nationality.

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Overtonwindow
I know it's wrong but.. I can't help but feel sorry for him and hope he got
away with it.

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locusm
Guy sounds like a complete egotistic POS.

~~~
paulcole
Not that different from a disruptive startup CEO. Took his shot, broke the
law, paid a price.

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vpribish
what are gold details?

~~~
tajen
A man, who stole $1m of gold, details his escape. Not gold details. He just
provides details on his escape. Punctuation matters.

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juhq
Why on earth is this on the frontpage?

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empath75
he should have just gotten the guy to send him bitcoin, and he’d have been
set.

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justboxing
Calling B.S. on his story that his fiance stole all the cash that he exchanged
the gold for.

Also, how come he wasn't arrested? The story starts with "he was in jail and
now out". How? The crime happened in 2016 and it's less than 2 years later
now.

~~~
passivepinetree
Did you read the article? He was arrested in Ecuador, sentenced to a year in
prison, and was out after 9 months for good behavior. There's no extradition
treaty between Ecuador and the U.S., so he wasn't sent back to the United
States (where he had a criminal record and the sentence which would have been
much higher).

~~~
justboxing
Yeah I just saw the video, didn't read the related text story. Thanks for the
info.

