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FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

nytimes.com

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Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#361

Post by solenoid0937 »

greenavocado wrote: post #133
solenoid0937 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I collect watches worth >$100k and I promise you that most collectors in this range are just watch nerds that have more money than they know what to do with. Singapore is a big watch market because it has a very tight knit and wealthy collector community. Margins on most watches in this range are around 10% on the low end. I wouldn't call that razor thin.

What people can actually do is buy a watch then return it in another branch in another country after paying a "restocking" fee.

If you're buying new, there is almost no dealer on the planet that will let you return watches this expensive. They lose so much value the moment you put them on.

I say "almost" no dealer because some domestic dealers have a 24-48h return policy but they are pretty strict about these things and care way more about their business than any money laundering attempt. They will be very suspicious of you buying in one country and asking for a return label from another.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#362

Post by Filligree »

irishcoffee wrote: post #298
Filligree wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that says more about them. Feeling good about the existence of something, or bad about its absence, does not count as evidence.

> Feeling good about the existence of something, or bad about its absence, does not count as evidence. Isn't the inverse also true?

Sure, but nonexistence is the default. Has to be the default; most possible things do not exist. In this case we have no evidence for, so we stay with the default.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#363

Post by 93po »

Aurornis wrote: post #303
fc417fc802 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small plot of forested rural land without utility service doesn't cost much at all. Go car camping at your new private getaway for a few days. This isn't rocket science. Also if you drive out to a remote part of the US who is going to see you? There are some very empty places in this country. Not quite on the level of Canada or Russia but still.

> A small plot of forested rural land without utility service doesn't cost much at all. Go car camping at your new private getaway for a few days. This isn't rocket science. Once someone is under investigation for something like this, they will look at everything. If the person suddenly bought a small plot of rural land with no utility service that’s going to raise red flags. As a secondary problem, once the investig…

> once the investigators start asking you about it you have to lie to them

You literally don't, that's what the fifth amendment is for

there's a large lack of creativity in these comments. pay for a deer lease, go hunting, don't bring phone, bury gold somewhere random in thousands of acres of land deep enough metal detectors won't find it, kill deer, go home. repeat 3x a year and it's both not suspicious at all but also basically impossible for others to find the gold at that point even if they suspect.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#364

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

The gold bars and foreign cash thing seems normal. They have to pay off warlords, drug dealers, foreign dignitaries, informants, assets. You can't be filling out requisition forms, going through multiple banks in foreign nations, carrying gold bars and cash in and out of banks, etc to pay off a secret government informant. Somebody will see the money trail, tip off the bad guys, and your op is over (and the informant is dead)

But of course it's also bad because not only can the money easily be stolen, there's basically no transparency into how intelligence agencies use taxpayer money. I have no idea how much corruption is in intelligence and military, but it's probably a lot, considering just how easy it is to steal or misappropriate these funds

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#365

Post by 93po »

wrsh07 wrote: post #354
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #27

That's ~280kg of gold if anyone wonders

From the article: > approximately 303 gold bars, each of which weighed approximately one kilogram So the bars just be a bit under one kg on average

probably less by the time it gets into the evidence locker

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#366

Post by irishcoffee »

Filligree wrote: post #362
irishcoffee wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feeling good about the existence of something, or bad about its absence, does not count as evidence. Isn't the inverse also true?

Sure, but nonexistence is the default. Has to be the default; most possible things do not exist. In this case we have no evidence for, so we stay with the default.

You're making the "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it" pontification? If so, I disagree with you.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#368

Post by fraserphysics »

lenerdenator wrote: post #95
iririririr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a disingenuous way of thinking. Not falling for this is the basis of much religious text by the way. Splitting baby in the middle, etc. But on the other hand, being a useful fool that blindly does anything for profit, Do seem in line with the people working in tech for the last decade. Yes, the CIA is a corrupt today as "tech". And no that is not ok nor required, or it ever was like that.

All spies are bastards. That's sort of their job. In the CIA it might speak more ill of the guy who was arrested that he was arrested than that he (allegedly) inflated his credentials and might have bilked the military for leave pay.

When I worked at Los Alamos, the head of counterintelligence was a former CIA ops guy. He seemed warm and intelligent; just an all around good guy. In presentations, he explained that his job at the CIA was to exploit that appearance to ruin people's lives. He said his approach was to gain the trust of a mark, and then provide him with what ever was required to get him to betray things he loved. The presentations were effective, enlightening and spooky.

So, I agree: All spies are bastards.

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#369

Post by dzonga »

thephyber wrote: post #245
dzonga wrote: post #242

this being the C.I.A - this guy is being railroaded or is being made a fall guy. he will serve a short jail term but at least he will live. remember folks - C.I.A is the only gvt org that self funds itself & can run entirely without gvt money.

> is the only gvt org that self funds itself & can run entirely without gvt money Citation needed. The CIA receives lots of opaque funding from the US government (at least opaque to citizens trying to FOIA), but just because it’s not easily accounted for doesn’t mean the org funds itself.

that's the point. you can't prove it. I can't prove it.

however - with a little common sense you can link everything together.

CIA has mandate to operate abroad. they can own mines, journalism houses, drug operations - abroad & in the U.S. technically the CIA is not allowed by law to operate in the US (but bcoz they're too powerful - they now have a free pass in that area)

remember they can also self-classify material. which means what they own will always remain opaque till they choose to declassify it usually after 70 or so years.

>> now back to the gold. remember they're restrictions around gold citizens can hold etc. & suddenly a private citizen has massive gold bars ? how so ? unless they were holding the gold for a powerful entity (but discovered by some gvt agency & now they need a fall guy) ?

Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home

#370

Post by mrandish »

rithdmc wrote: post #251
somenameforme wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more tantalizing is that it was probably a domestic bribe he was tasked with. Traveling internationally with hundreds of kg of gold is not very reasonable and I'd assume they have access to resources in other countries as needed. And we'll get all the answer, it'll just take 50 years, and then everything will probably make a lot more sense. Maybe even sooner if an administration finally gets the courage and brai…

I don't think it'd be difficult for the CIA to charter a cargo plane from somewhere in the USA without any questions being asked. They used to be very involved in the air freight trade. Guns don't move themselves!

Yes, I agree. CIA cargo flights out of U.S. military bases and private airfields probably happen all the time. My point was that if the guy's scheme to get the gold issued involved a cover story of flying the gold on such a cargo flight to some general or warlord somewhere, I can't imagine the normal process is "Ok, we'll deliver a pallet of >600 pounds of gold bars to your office desk."

The CIA must have people who securely transport illicit things like pallets of gold, RPGs, explosives, etc from a wherever they are warehoused to airfields for secret cargo flights. So, I was puzzled by how the culprit circumvented what I assume would be the normal delivery channel and took direct possession himself.

The reality may be more depressingly banal than clever clandestine deception. The guy was probably just the senior person in charge of approving dispersal of the CIA's slush fund 'petty cash' for illicit bribes and payoffs. And, incomprehensibly, there was no process for reviewing the approver's approvals, so he just wrote up his own paperwork and approved delivering it to himself in whatever way he found convenient. Hell, maybe he just had them deliver it to his house.

I guess that's the kind of stupid stuff that can happen when you combine "need to know" compartmentalized secrecy with massive bureaucracy. People just do what the paperwork says and don't ask questions or care.

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