Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 419 posts

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

#371

Post by harambae »

troyvit wrote: post #292
Radle wrote: post #118

From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.” Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“. —— Also the CIA was unable to confirm his discharge with the navy earlier? As if people aren…

> Obvious plant $40 million in gold bars is about a thousand pounds of gold. That would be hard to plant.

Not that it matters, but I think it's closer to 600 lbs.

$40M /( $4.5k / oz) and then (1 lbs / 16 oz)

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

#372

Post by bell-cot »

harambae wrote: post #371
troyvit wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obvious plant $40 million in gold bars is about a thousand pounds of gold. That would be hard to plant.

Not that it matters, but I think it's closer to 600 lbs. $40M /( $4.5k / oz) and then (1 lbs / 16 oz)

For precious metals, the units of measure are a bit different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_weight

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

#373

Post by rdtsc »

stult wrote: post #132
rdtsc wrote: post #62

> From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.” - "I need these bars to pay off this Russian spy who will tell us Putin's nuclear codes password" Comes back a week later - "His password is 12345" - "How do we know the story is not fake?" - "What am I going to get…

Weirdly the CIA actually does require case officers to get signed receipts from their assets for payments. Whether they verify the signatures is another question...

Ha! That's interesting. I think it would be funny to read some of those. "I, Mr. Ivanov, the Russian spy, got: 2 bars of gold, 5 buckets of caviar, 10 cases of vodka and 3 kilos of cocaine". Then they call the CIA headquarters complaining the cocaine is stale and they would rather have another 5 buckets of caviar instead.

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

#374

Post by mrandish »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #284
mrandish wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no explanation on what kind of expenses those could be I think it's pretty obvious the gold was to pay a bribe. The only thing I'm surprised about is the value. That's A LOT of money for a single pay-off or bribe. It seems more than what would conceivably be paid to an individual at once because spy agencies tend to prefer to pay-as-you-go with individuals. Each round of documents, actions or whatever gets a paymen…

> But the thing I'm stuck on is the places you can walk into and get cash for even one kilo of gold My sister had been hoarding our mother's & grandmothers' jewelry for decades. I finally got her to sell off the gold before another of her bad choices in boyfriends stole the rest (last guy took her for about $40k). We took a check for it, but the guy had most of the $70k in cash at hand. No KYC at all. Here in the US.…

Sure, selling the sorts of gold grandmothers and crazy uncles horde like rolls of Krugerrand coins, etc and even raw flake amateur prospectors mine out in Nevada is common and probably pretty easy to convert into cash amounts up to a few hundred thousand dollars. But these seem to have been minted gold bars, very likely stamped and serialized.

Admittedly, I don't know that industry, but wouldn't trying to cash even a dozen 1kg minted gold bars with Federal Reserve serial numbers trigger some... questions? Or alternatively, require finding a vendor who explicitly asks no questions (basically a fence for probable stolen or illicit goods). And, even moving the gold a dozen bricks at a time is 25 separate transactions of over $1.7 million each. Are there a lot of places that just keep a couple million in $100 bills on hand for transactions? The largest branch of a national bank in our suburban area of 200K people gets pissy when we go to get $10,000 cash without calling ahead because "we might run out and need to schedule extra cash delivery."

If it's really possible to walk into a "We Buy Gold" place with 12 1kg gold bars and walk out with $1.7M in cash, no questions asked I'm just surprised. As someone who leans moderate libertarian, I don't have a problem with it. I do kind of resent having to fill out a government form (and the implied presumption I'm a criminal) anytime I get $10K of cash at the bank.

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

#375

Post by DANmode »

scheeseman486 wrote: post #213
rbanffy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes parts of the CIA look incompetent to the public. This is rare. It’s reasonable to assume they knew it from the start he was getting money illicitly from the Navy and they might have enabled it. This was part of the leverage they had on him, to be used if he ever became a liability.

> It makes parts of the CIA look incompetent to the public. This is rare. Iran–Contra? Their cyber espoinage tools getting swiped? The self-admission from the US administration that the CIA failed to properly recognize and prepare for the tactics used in 9/11, in spite of ample forward warning? Like most intelligence agencies, their unaccountable power often gets mistaken for actual intelligence. That power makes the…

> Their cyber espoinage tools getting swiped?

Pretty sure that was some of their own more-corrupted people leaking those tools - at least, one of the occasions.

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

#377

Post by lab14 »

tejohnso wrote: post #281
lab14 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you see smart people all over the world talking to imaginary, supernatural, all powerfull beings asking for favors via prayers, like that would have any effect on their lives.

I get your point, but prayer can be akin visualization and practiced focus, which can indeed have an effect on one's life. Then there's the type of prayer where you straight up beg for things from FSM for five seconds and move on with your day. Probably less helpful, that.

i'm OK with meditation, as it doesn't require believing in superatural, all powerful beings

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

#378

Post by mrandish »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #308
bitmasher9 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we often underestimate the intelligence of the criminal population for two main reasons. 1. The dumbest ones are most likely to be caught and have their stories told. 2. Law Enforcement often gets frustrated at chasing the smarter ones and use illegal methods catching them and the real story doesn’t come out in court.

Are you telling me that Luigi Manglone was not foiled by a eagle eyed McDonalds employee?!?

Near as I can tell Luigi nullified all his carefully planned evasion and escape routing by deciding at the last minute he really needed a coffee from the Starbucks across the street from where he was about to shoot his victim and didn't keep his hoody up. If he'd worn a long-billed baseball cap, dark glasses, kept his hoody up and skipped Starbucks he'd probably never have been caught.

His evasion and escape plan was actually pretty good and he put a lot of effort into being hard to trace by arriving and departing NYC via bus and staying in a hostel, which makes it surprising he screwed up the easiest and most obvious things.

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

#379

Post by Koshkin »

wombat-man wrote: post #274
pyuser583 wrote: post #239

I read a book by a CIA officer. A big part the job is carrying around tons of cash for shady people. It’s understood that if you take the cash for yourself, you go to prison. The ironic thing is the money usually goes missing. It gets given to some VIPs brother, who is supposed to give it to VIP, but doesn’t. The important thing is it not go missing while you are watching it. It can go missing later - just not on you…

interested in knowing what book, if it was good.

[flagged]

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

#380

Post by AngryData »

Aurornis wrote: post #148
unsupp0rted wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or are you imagining he'd go bury the gold in a hole in the woods somewhere? Why not?

Why not carry 600 lbs of gold bars out into the forest and bury them, then hope nobody thought it was suspicious to see someone carrying a shovel into the forest on any one of the trips necessary to do it?

There are endless miles of places in the US where you could not be seen. That said as evidence by your perspective, there are plenty of people who have never really been to places where you can not see another human for days or weeks or longer if you don't count seeing simple movement or campfire smoke a mile off.
Post reply on HN