Jeff S Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
15y
8,465
Subscriptor++
jandrese said:
This is actually somewhat impressive. 12,600 victims means each one was extorted for around $135, which seems like the amount of money you might expect an average 14-17 year old boy to have. That's an enormous amount of work on the scammers part. Day in and day out camming and scamming.
One of the things that often ends up being the case for groups committing organized crime is that, when you look at the hours worked to perpetrate the crime, most of the people in the crime ring don't get paid very well. The people at the very top of the gang usually make some decent money.

There have been a few studies on the economics of gangs primarily involved in drug dealing, and most of the people in the gang were making minimum wage or much less - despite taking enormous risks both legally, and the risk of getting shot or beat up or whatever by rival gangs or even your own gang if they decide it's time to 'fire' you.

On top of that, if the criminal enterprise has some success, there's a very real risk that as soon as you start making some money, now you gotta start paying out protection money to crooked cops, politicians, judges, etc.

Even that people at the top of the gangs topped out at around $130k annually, which would be a very good wage for a middle class professional, but really low for an 'executive management' person, which is the closest analog for those groups.

Makes you wonder why they don't get the idea if they are starting up what basically constitutes a business, to sell something legal instead.