Re:$12M stolen from 1,400 convenience store ATMs across Japa...
by dclowd9901 on Sunday May 22, 2016 @11:32AM
(#11748932)
A 10% cut wouldn't be $100. It sounds like each person ran about 140(!) transactions, maxing the withdrawal on each one. That's 14 million yen per person or about 127,000 usd. 10% would be 12,700. Still possible that this happened but my guess is it was yakuza given the coordination and manpower.
Re:$12M stolen from 1,400 convenience store ATMs across Japa...
by rincebrain on Monday May 23, 2016 @09:18AM
(#11753619)
As someone upthread remarked, it actually seems improbable it was yakuza - way too visible, even with no provable connection, going to make their lives problematic for awhile.
Plus, we probably wouldn't be hearing about it a week after the fact, if it's part of a long-standing interaction like the yakuza, barring someone with loose lips.
Chances are the ones going to the ATMs are money mules (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_mule), probably not of the completely innocent kind, but of the "not too smart, falling for a 'want to earn $100 in an hour?'" question from a 'friend'.
$100 will give them about a 10% cut, if they do one ATM. It is more likely, though, that they had each guy do >1 ATM. So, you would need, maybe, around 250 of these guys. To recruit them, find around 50 slightly smarter but still not too smart guys who get $2000 each. On top of that, you need real criminals who can make sure the lower levels do not run away with the money, either by convincingly threatening them with bodily harm, or by following them to the ATMs while staying out of view of the cameras.
Yes, costs will add up, but you should be able to keep costs below 50%.