How much money - approximately - does crime pay?

[CdnWriter]

So....if you're trying to write a crime story and the criminals are collecting money from their various illegal endeavours, HOW much money, approximately can each type of crime bring in?

Is there any resource that answers this question? It doesn't have to be 100% accurate or realistic but it does have to be plausible. Google is giving me such ridiculous sums that it doesn't track at all. Like there are drug kingpins or mafia godfathers that are making like $100 million a year.....

(A YEAR?!?!?!?!?)

I know crime does pay (as long as you don't get caught) but the sums I am seeing are mind-boggling.

So, is there some general guideline on how much money one can make selling drugs? Extorting businesses? Robbing banks? Running prostitution rings? Gambling rackets?

I know there can be multiple ways to make money on one crime - like the snakeheads that smuggle people out of China into the USA (or the coyotes from Mexico to the USA) make money on the smuggling fee, then when the illegal immigrant gets into the USA, they can be put to work in "massage parlours" or sweatshops owned by the initial criminal organization or sold off as slaves to bad people.

I also realize the "worse" the crime, the more profit. "Worse" is relative. I've seen "FBI: Most Wanted" where organs were illegally harvested at $1 million. I've seen "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Law & Order: Organized Crime" where murder for hire was like $20,000 to $50,000. I've also seen a few flicks where some criminals killed people for $50. It seems all over the place.

I'm willing to do the research, but it would be tremendously helpful if someone could point me in the right direction, so I don't wade through hundreds of pages of Google results that are irrelevant.

And...bonus question. Assuming you're a successful criminal that's making oodles and oodles of money...how do you explain the fact you own 12 Porches and 3 mansions when you don't work??? Sure, maybe you inherited money or you won the lottery but that explanation can't work for all criminals. Do they all have Limited Liability Corporations (LLC) and get a weekly dividend check as a shareholder?

If it helps, I envision my character starting off as a human trafficker, selling a toddler they rescued from a car wreck to a family that can't have children. This is initially a crime of opportunity and it made money, so my MC is doing it again and again, plus as they have this whole system for smuggling children around, why not make a deal with a cartel for protection and human resources to provide security in exchange for access to their smuggling routes and knowledge. They'd go from "rescuing" children and selling them on the black market to kidnapping children (or buying them) and selling them, plus using their connections to move drugs and guns as well.

Thanks to any/all that can help! Back to the Google rabbit hole.....

EDIT: This is one of the results from my Google exploring....

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596723000501

EDIT 2: This is the best answer I've seen, especially from Carlos Esteban Velasquez

How much do criminals make in their respective criminal fields?

Answer (1 of 3): They usually do not file income tax returns with their illegal income, so we do not have accurate data by 'respective criminal fields. To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a even a NAICS Identification Tools (NAICS code) for them to report earnings from 'small business'. IRS...

www.quora.com

 

[big soft moose]

It depends a lot on what level of crime you’re at

A street level dealer makes hardly anything because he has to hand over most of his take to his crew boss

The guy in charge of the whole crew on the other hand will easily make a 100k plus

And the kingpin in charge of the whole supply network could be making that 100 mil

Same goes for other sorts of crime.. a guy shop lifting generally gets 10% of face value from a fence…

The fence makes more when he flips his goods but he has to pay a commission to the local crew for ‘protection’

And the guy getting all those commissions will be on significantly more

It’s just like a white business. The guy working in an Amazon warehouse is on minimum wage while Jeff bezos is one of the richest men on the world

 

[big soft moose]

in ref of this i found a thing in one of my novels where the MC is talking about the economics of street prostitution... which when i was writing it i put together out of a bunch of research from second hand sources and including speaking to some sketchy people, the basics of that were

the hooker charges £25 for half an hour or so , of which she gets to keep about a £5... she does maybe 10 tricks a day so £50 for her and 200 for the pimp. She then spends £30 of her 50 on heroin or similar which she also buys from her pimp

the pimp has 8 hookers in his string servicing the local truck stop so he gets £1600 a day of which he retains only about 5% or £80...plus another 240 for the gear, of which he also retains 10%. or £24

the 'area manager' (they actually call it a crew boss but terms vary) who controls street prostitution the city has 12 pimps working different teritores all passing him their take which is circa £1656 x12 = £19,870... he retains about 30% of that but also has expenses, pay offs and so forth... so he passes 12,096 per day back to his regional OC contact

I didnt talk to the OC crew because they are seriously dangerous folk and i'm not that dumb, but we could reasonably assume that they have similiar operations in about 20 towns across the region meaning that their daily take is 241,920... which won't all be profit because they have to pay expenses, pay their solidiers, pay for the drugs whole sale and so forth... but even if we said 50% that's about 120k a day or 43.8 million quid a year... which is split between about five people

when you figure the same OC crew will also be running drugs, guns, human traficking and name it, you can easily see how the big boys get to the 100 million mark. (incidentally like legit millionaires they keep most of the cash off shore and then wash the proportion they want to spend through white businesses)

 

[Naomasa298]

If you hack a crypto exchange, it could net you billions.

 

[big soft moose]

In ref of murder for hire, there are junkies and associated fuckwits who'll do it for a wrap of horse, but on the professional end according to the research i did for my Dusty Miller series where the MC is a hitman of sorts, the going rate for a hit on a civillian is £10k. If its a hard target like a criminal or a businessman with protection then the price goes up depending on how dangerous the target is and how well protected. if it gas tro look natural or whatever that also costs more. At the top end you could easily be talking half a mil or more

i would note that the idea of an organised crime button man who does nothing else is a holywood invention, by and large they either do other crime as well or they are effectively mercenaries

 

[Rigor Mortis]

Having 12 Porches and 3 mansions will attract the attention of your local police force and revenue commissioners and they may not be the greatest threats. Managing that kind of splurge on ill-gotten wealth is only possible if there's semi-legitimate fronts to explain cash flow and living expenses; car dealerships, pubs, haulage. There are criminals who make large sums of money from selling drugs who may as well live in a prison cell because their houses are still in the same location, bullet-proofed and shutters drawn. These only get to spend their money in secret, like having teeth done in Turkey, butt implants in Bulgaria, particular brands of clothing. To enjoy the full fruits of criminal earnings, the crime boss must have the capacity to live away from sphere of operations, present as legitimate business owner or, as some of the cartel leaders seem to do, establish an almost independent society with a private army that no-one's going to mess with.

It operates like an inverted iceberg, with the many lowest level operatives most visible doing the runs to pay off grossly inflated debts or feeding own habits to the upper tier under the water who blend in like wealthy entrepreneurs. For the upper tier, the sky's the limit.

 

[Trish]

I think on the new series Mobland they said they were making 2.5 million per week through their various streams of income? It's fictional, yes, but not far fetched depending on the level of the criminal.

If you put the car thief who sells to the chop shop at 50 million a year you're going to raise a lot of eyebrows in disbelief.

If you put the owner of the chop shop (and 3 other chop shops, as well as a few legit *cough* money laundering shops, I mean laundromats and hole in the wall restaurants) at 50 million a year most likely people will wonder what he's doing wrong and why he isn't making more.

 

[CdnWriter]

I think on the new series Mobland they said they were making 2.5 million per week through their various streams of income? It's fictional, yes, but not far fetched depending on the level of the criminal.

If you put the car thief who sells to the chop shop at 50 million a year you're going to raise a lot of eyebrows in disbelief.

If you put the owner of the chop shop (and 3 other chop shops, as well as a few legit *cough* money laundering shops, I mean laundromats and hole in the wall restaurants) at 50 million a year most likely people will wonder what he's doing wrong and why he isn't making more.

I have not seen the series, but I did enjoy the Starz programs, "Power"; "Power: Force"; "Power: Raising Kanan"; "Power: Ghost" and "Godfather of Harlem" as well as the Marvel tv shows on Disney + like "Daredevil" where he comes into conflict with an organized crime figure, "The Kingpin."

There's a part in one of the "Power" esipodes where Tommy & Ghost (co-leaders of their drug dealing fraction) are shown with piles and piles of money in one of their stash houses and saying they're drowning in money but they can't spend any of it until they clean it. They did own a chain of laundromats through which they washed their cash.

Thank you for the information.

 

[CdnWriter]

If you hack a crypto exchange, it could net you billions.

IF you know how to do this, yes. I don't understand this type of technology well enough to write about in any thing like a plausible manner. I'd be too simplistic - "She hacked into bitcoin X-change and skimmed off $20 million from the investments." I think it's too simplistic, I would want to write at least a couple chapters around the crime and the escape.

 

[CdnWriter]

Having 12 Porches and 3 mansions will attract the attention of your local police force and revenue commissioners and they may not be the greatest threats. Managing that kind of splurge on ill-gotten wealth is only possible if there's semi-legitimate fronts to explain cash flow and living expenses; car dealerships, pubs, haulage. There are criminals who make large sums of money from selling drugs who may as well live in a prison cell because their houses are still in the same location, bullet-proofed and shutters drawn. These only get to spend their money in secret, like having teeth done in Turkey, butt implants in Bulgaria, particular brands of clothing. To enjoy the full fruits of criminal earnings, the crime boss must have the capacity to live away from sphere of operations, present as legitimate business owner or, as some of the cartel leaders seem to do, establish an almost independent society with a private army that no-one's going to mess with.

It operates like an inverted iceberg, with the many lowest level operatives most visible doing the runs to pay off grossly inflated debts or feeding own habits to the upper tier under the water who blend in like wealthy entrepreneurs. For the upper tier, the sky's the limit.

I'm leaning towards having a Limited Liability Corporation employing my MC and their henchmen and that LLC in turn is owned by a series of other LLC's which trace back to my MC at some point but it would take a very skilled and dedicated forensic accountant to unravel the threads of ownership. In that case, my MC and the henchmen use the assets owned by the LLC like the mansions and Porsches. Who's to say that a Porsche can't be the company car? That the company can't provide housing for its employees?

I have considered car dealership just so there are various vehicles available to the organization.

I do see the MC eventually becoming the CEO and being insulated from the day-to-day operations of the organization's activities, maybe having a President of the corporation as the "public face"of the organization while they focus on developing operations and working "behind-the-scenes."

 

[Trish]

I have not seen the series, but I did enjoy the Starz programs, "Power"; "Power: Force"; "Power: Raising Kanan"; "Power: Ghost" and "Godfather of Harlem" as well as the Marvel tv shows on Disney + like "Daredevil" where he comes into conflict with an organized crime figure, "The Kingpin."

There's a part in one of the "Power" esipodes where Tommy & Ghost (co-leaders of their drug dealing fraction) are shown with piles and piles of money in one of their stash houses and saying they're drowning in money but they can't spend any of it until they clean it. They did own a chain of laundromats through which they washed their cash.

Thank you for the information.

You're welcome. To be completely honest, if you really want to understand how it works and the possibilities there are a few old school shows that weren't shy about it. Goodfellas (a movie, but still) is an old favorite of mine. The Sopranos will always be gold in my mind. There are tons of mob documentaries that go into detail about operations and structure. Even movies like Gone in 60 Seconds can bring a little more understanding of the levels of criminal activity (Poor, poor Eleanor).

Realistically, thats what you're looking for, the structure of it and the hierarchy. The rules, so to speak. Oh! Another good one is Tulsa King. Didn't expect Stallone to be that good at his age but I love that show.

Once you have the basic structure understood you can apply it to anything from motorcycle gangs to drug cartels to even social media mavens and MLM's. It all breaks down the same.