Make that one big, low-paying, stressful, perpetually dangerous party

It seems no matter where I am, the press finds me. This time about more criminal activity involving the financial underworlds terrible management of their own financuial activities besides not filing with the IRS (being the worst since Al Capon was taken down by the IRS when all others could not, not even Elliet Ness) actions.
Yes it IS very "hard" to beleive that the criminal underword does a WORSE job on its books that our own United States Government.

Below is the entire article.

Make that one big, low-paying, stressful, perpetually dangerous party
Like the slain bikers, most criminals are unfamiliar with the glamorous life
Apr. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUTSUL
TORONTO STAR

According to his online dating profile, Jamie Flanz was a CEO. In real life, the 37-year-old's fortunes were not so fetching. Flanz was a tow truck driver and a prospective Bandidos member — an association that led to his slaying last week.

Though he might have imagined himself as a high-rolling executive, his was not a life of riches. Nor was it for the other seven men who died as part of what was described as the Bandidos' brutal "internal cleansing."
One victim was a 41-year-old man who lived with his parents. Another lived in his truck. They all depended on full-time jobs to get by.
And they all met a gruesome fate.

This meagre existence counters the glamorized perception of those who choose a life of crime over the plebeian existence of the masses. We imagine criminals, divested of the taxes, 40-hour work weeks and mortgages that saddle the common person, cruising along Easy Street, flush with cash and hard drugs, and having wild sex.
The profiles of the eight men who died should prove, once and for all, that crime doesn't pay.

"We have this idea that these guys that work outside the system, maybe they've got it right, maybe these people are having a better life than the guy doing 9 to 5 — but most criminals live in poverty," says Cecil Greek, a professor of criminology at Florida State University.
The image of the glamorous criminal is rampant in pop culture. Take for instance, the stylish lifestyles of the well-dressed bank thieves in the revamped Ocean's 11 franchise. Hip-hop stars of the gangsta ilk are seen posing with — in addition to beautiful women and luxury cars — mountains of cash.
On one of his album sleeves, the rapper 50 Cent poses with a cash-counting machine.
Such images paint an inaccurate picture of the career criminal's lifestyle; Greek says rich criminals are "extremely rare."
The subject was raised last year in Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's bestselling book Freakonomics. In a chapter called "Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?" the authors described a drug-dealing operation as a bloated, inefficient organization. There were a few wealthy members at the top and a slew of underpaid minions at the bottom. They compared the gang's organizational structure to that of McDonald's.
`There's sleep deprivation, a loss
of appetite, you end up having paranoia to such a degree that you can't even function as a criminal any more.'
"The answer to the original question... is that, except for the top cats, (the dealers) don't make much money," wrote Levitt and Dubner. "They had no choice but to live with their mothers. For every big earner, there were hundreds more just scraping along."
"People aren't getting rich because there are too many people involved," says Chevalier. "There are payments to keep people quiet, there are cops to pay, security guards to pay, you have to pay the people who arranged the selling of the merchandise... There's not a whole lot of people getting rich."
Chevalier also points out that goods are devalued in an underground economy. The value of, say, a diamond priced at $10,000 in a store takes on a cash value of $2,000 on the streets.
But even if more money were flowing into the hands of criminals and gangsters, they probably wouldn't know what to do with it.
It turns out criminals have poor money-management skills. The Oregon Mail Tribune reported in 2001 that only seven per cent of inmates in Oregon prisons have more than $200 in their bank accounts.
"They're not people who defer gratification in the first place," says Greek. "The money those people make, they just go spend it. It's not like they're investing in a nest egg and at the age of 40 they're going to go live in Tahiti. They don't have long-term goals like that.
"People doing robberies are basically living from one robbery to the next. They may go out and do a ton of robberies over a weekend, then they don't have to do any for a month and a half. But they know that when the money's gone, they'll have to go do some more robberies. That's as far ahead as it's planned."
As demonstrated by last week's massacre, financial instability is only one concern for a career criminal. They also face a constant threat from the police and, often, from other criminals, sometimes from within their own clan, as was the case with the Bandidos.
What people on the right side of the law might perceive as a romantic, rogue lifestyle is actually a rueful existence.
"They go through psychological trauma knowing what they've done to hurt people," says Chevalier "They start envisioning those things happening to them. They don't trust anyone and anything.
"That makes a great afternoon movie, but in real life the human mind cannot take that kind of heightened sensitivity and alertness and awareness all the time. There's sleep deprivation, a loss of appetite, you end up having paranoia to such a degree that you can't even function as a criminal any more."
Additional articles by Christopher Hutsul

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