Expected Value of Crime

Roll a 100-sided dice.
95% chance you get $35,000.
5% chance you go to jail for 2-4 years.

You can play this game as often as you like. Is this game worth playing? How many times a year would you play? Is the EV positive?

>pic unrelated

Other urls found in this thread:

cut-the-knot.org/Probability/LengthToFirstSuccess.shtml
youtube.com/watch?v=e_qB7rqr_1o
youtube.com/watch?v=VSsAjnjzUr4
youtube.com/watch?v=qhjai3pgCSg
youtube.com/watch?v=r2o6eBR7Y8o
youtube.com/watch?v=M8g_ipX6xss
youtube.com/watch?v=QSjCVMLgM7s
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2826512/New-York-jewellery-thief-snatched-250-000-worth-valuables-London-boutiques-caught-leaving-mobile-phone-scene-crime-selfie-screensaver.html
jewelerssecurity.org/pdf/2015 Stats with charts.pdf
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

and no this isn't a freaken homework question, it's just something i've been thinking about for "reasons"

and I know the "EV" can't really be computed, unless maybe you factor in "lost wages" due to jail?? meh, my autism

I'd play, probably not more than once or twice though

On average, you expect to roll 20 times before going to jail. So you win 19*35,000 = $665,000, on average, for every jail sentence of 2-4 years. Sometimes you will win much less than this, and sometimes you will win much more.

To answer your question, you simply have to ask yourself whether an average return of $665,000 is worth 2-4 years of jail time. This is a personal question and there is no wrong or write answer. For a father of four who can't put food on the table, it may be a no brainer. For a person who is making ends meet, it might be a ludicrous proposition.

Also for a person who is in a financial emergency that would be completely solved with $35,000, it's likely worth the risk. Especially if it's a medical emergency.

A 1 in 20 chance of ailure doesnt mean you expect to have 19 consecutive successes

this is a good post and really made me think.

And if anyone is curious there is actually a highly lucrative, extremely simple crime that has an 85% success rate on average (according to FBI stats), and if you remove the amateurs who make elementary mistakes the success rate is over 95%

not gonna say what it is tho

No one cares. Also, your question was actually interesting and emotion provoking by the sheer nature of chance and desperation, (not much of a shorter way that I could put in to words).
Heres your (you)

>tldr nice try fbi

On average, yes, you do.

cut-the-knot.org/Probability/LengthToFirstSuccess.shtml

How lucrative?

You're thinking like a blue collar crim. Next level is white collar, which may be stupider actually. Smarter are black collar (organized) and silver collar (bureaucrat) crime.

Whereas blue and white collar crims accept or embrace the negative outcome, black and silver collars try to reduce the risk by modifying their social context so the negative consequence never happens.

$20-40k are safe numbers for starters.
I've seen guys do it for over $100k.
Problem is you can only bank 1/3 of what you take, so guys who profit $100k are actually looting $300k+.

And when you hit $300k the police will probably work a bit harder to investigate...maybe.

But bear in mind this is a non-violent, super simple crime, that only takes a couple days to plan and can be executed quite easily in an evening or morning, given the right connections.

Hypothetically..of course

Doing it 13 times leaves the probability of 0 arrests to just a bit over 50%

As stated it's very hard to say whether the game is worth it because crucial information is missing.

1) what my earning opportunities are in spite of this
2) how often I can play the game
3) whether playing this game is genuinely an independent trial

Since we're talking crime, (2) and (3) are definitely not well-modeled by dice. But if we reject this quibble for the moment, (1) is still important in order to understand whether playing the game is a net win because we have to discount jailtime somehow.

For instance, if I make 80K a year then 4 years of lost productivity is $320,000 which means my expected winnings must reach this threshold for the game to be worth it. In this case I only have a 60% chance of staying out of jail in 10 rolls, so the game is not worth it to me.

>what are my earnings

yea this part depends on the player.

> if I make 80K a year then 4 years of lost productivity is $320,000 which means my expected winnings

do you actually make 80k/yr? and what is 80k after taxes? Your crime loot isn't taxed. In Seattle or BC Canada you'd take home 61k after taxes. So that's 244,000.

this is a very easy decision if you hate working or hate your job in general. I was making $60k year at an office job, 9-5. But add in the daily commute, waking up early, getting ready in the morning, it was more like 8am to 6pm, basically the whole week gets eaten away and I'd be praying for the weekend to come so I could relax for a bit, then rinse repeat. I realized I'd have to do this for decades before I could retire or save enough to invest so I wouldn't have to work, it felt like a prison sentence already. Plus I had to live in a big city which meant cost-of-living was very high so saving income wasn't easy.

And I was getting taxed around 20% of my earnings...fug.

Now this "hypothetical operation" I could do once or twice per year, then go live in some cheap eastern euro or asian country and live super comfortably.

I was just reading a news report about a guy in London who did this crime about 12x in a row, in the span of a few months, he got caught during his last attempt though for a really really dumb mistake, accidentally left his ID at the scene of the crime lmao...but it's such a simple and easy operation to pull off, takes a couple days to plan and only a few minutes to execute.

if I got the money in cash then I wouldn't roll the die.

I can't launder that money so can't use it on anything useful.

If it was debited directly to my bank account then 2-4 years is pretty weak shit.
with a 5% chance of going to jail you'd expect 20 rolls before you went to jail.
that would be 700000 dollars. assuming you didn't get your money confiscated automatically, that might be worth going to jail for then living off that somewhere,

yes, that's exactly what it means.

drop out, brainlet

you aren't going to go to jail for saying the name of a crime

you can get the money in cash or cheque deposit into your bank account, or both. laundering isn't an issue.

I'd leave my home country though and go live somewhere cheap, start a bank account overseas, transfer the money there, and not worry about taxes and reporting.

ehh, I don't wanna discuss the details of the crime, inevitably some guys gonna be like '"hurrr that'll never work! it can't be so easy! what if this happens...'" and then I''ll have to post news reports, videos, and FBI stats to explain all the details/facts/contingencies.

Well, let's say I earn $x/year (which I can't earn if I'm in jail). Also, we'll just split the middle and say 3 years instead of 2-4.
I would commit the crime if my expected gains are greater than my expected losses.
Expected gains = 0.95*($35000).
Expected losses = 0.5*(3 years)*($x/year) = 1.5*$x.
So for Expected gains > expected losses,
0.95*$35000 > 1.5*$x
Rearranging, we have:
$x < $22166.67 (to the nearest cent).
This means the crime is worth committing (at least economically) if I earn less than $22166.67 per year.
I hadn't really thought of it this way before, but that offers a very good insight into why lower income areas tend to have higher crime rates.

well, let's find the breakeven point here in a naive analysis. at what annual salary does the expected value of the crime turn out to be zero?

if we assume the maximum penalty of 4 years, and calcualate it as
0 = .95*35000 - x*4*.05
then if you make less than $166,250 a year and you truly get as many opportunities as you want to play the game, then you should play, but if you make more than that, you shouldn't

that isn't a very convincing explanation when it's not like you're obligated to reply to people who don't believe that the crime has those properties, nor are you obligated to post any evidence about hte crime.

I fucked up. That should be
Expected losses = 0.05*(3 years)*($x/year) = 0.15*$x.
Which means I should commit the crime if I earn less than $221666.67/year. A significantly more attractive crime.
This model doesn't take into account lost income due to having a criminal record after being released, but that doesn't really change the principle, only the numbers.

only relevant if you want to go your whole life without jail time

>This model doesn't take into account lost income due to having a criminal record after being released, but that doesn't really change the principle, only the numbers.
if anything it increases the attractiveness of the crime, because it lowers the value you're using to determine how much money you stand to lose by not doing a crime

Is that the one about some old ass man stealing museum stuff or some shit like that? I think I saw it on the news.

Other way around. It would add to the losses from committing the crime.
The expected losses, in reality, would be
0.05*((3 years)*($x/year) + (n years)*($y/year)),
where n is the number of years you expected to work after being released and $y is the amount per year you would expect your income to by reduced by due to having a criminal record.
So, it would make the crime less attractive. However, if you're already earning a low income and don't expect that to get much better it won't have much of an effect.

does the fact that it only takes 2-3 days worth of "prep-work" to pull off the crime affect the comparison?

Because working legally for wages has a huge time-cost, 40hours a week, 52weeks a year, 2080 hours/year -- that's a lot of "lost time" or unfree waking time.

>just a bit over 50%

not exactly a golden 'free from jail' card

>Smarter are black collar (organized) and silver collar (bureaucrat) crime.
>hurr lets use random colors to refer to criminals and pretend anybody else knows what the fuck we are talking about and we arent making these up out of our ass as we go

Depends how much you value your free time.

wait a second, 2-4years of jail time is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, IF you find a way to keep your loot.

>with a 5% chance of going to jail you'd expect 20 rolls before you went to jail.
>that would be $700000 dollars

I'd go to jail for 2-4 years if I could come out with 700k in my bank account.

>jail
>lost wages

sorta, not really. Jail provides you shelter and food and some exercise and reading material, so you're necessities are taken care of.

You don't really lose ALL your wages in a sense you should only factor in lost profits/savings. What you would've saved outside of jail. How much does the average person save per month $500? $1000? You're looking at $6000 to 12,000 per year in lost savings??

not really a big lose desu.

Also, you would factor in how much freedom is worth to you. This is essentially how much you would pay to not live in jail.

>all these single virgins
A wife and kids makes that 5% seem like 95

do a couple of these operations and starting a family would be much easier, less stressful.

>Is this game worth playing?
I think for me it would largely depend on the type of jail I'd get sent to. I'd be much more hesitant if it meant being housed with violent inmates.

nigga just recruit me into the fucking mafia already
i'm a math wizard so i deserve 300k starting

>You can play this game as often as you like.
Goof'ed.

Yes.

Graham's number.

Yes (this question is equivalent to the 1st).

With an arbitrarily large amount of money, leaving prison is trivial.

>all these other responses
t. brainlets

low security, nordic european jail.

What if you can't push the button during jail?

Keep rolling it until you have enough money to buy the prison.

You need to account for risk of ruin, never mind discounting the lost wages due to incarceration.

What is the probability, conditional on your being caught, that there is further exploratiin/audit of your activities? This could result in a payoff so punishing that the downside isn't worth it.


It'd be like selling a put on a stock with a small but significant chance of taking a huge nosedive.

>and I know the "EV" can't really be computed, unless maybe you factor in "lost wages" due to jail?? meh, my autism
for neet faggots like yourself the EV of jail time is $0.

tell us what it is faggot

Yeah fucking tell us I'm curious, I promise I won't argue or say it's dumb

>especially if it's a medical emergency
>Americans

Just tell us or stop attention whoring

I'm guessing carding

nah

nope, it's actually simpler than carding

>You need to account for risk of ruin, never mind discounting the lost wages due to incarceration.

working is already a form of incarceration, and you shouldn't look at "lost wages" because jail already provides all the basics for you, which you would have to work for as a civilian. What you should factor is simply lost "savings". And most people don't save much money per year anyway.

Is this crime difficult to do? like do you need lots of tools, or just the knowhow?

>working is already a form of incarceration
Really made me think

Tried, got 140k and after that spend 2-4 years in jail. I might do this for real if the value was tenfold.

Geometric random variable.

>working is already a form of incarceration

Enjoy Jamals cock in your ass.

>Make big money with this one simple trick!
>FBI agents HATE him!

Ask me how I know you're the worst that the human race has to offer itself

meh I guess I'll post it.
team version:
youtube.com/watch?v=e_qB7rqr_1o

solo version:
youtube.com/watch?v=VSsAjnjzUr4
youtube.com/watch?v=qhjai3pgCSg
youtube.com/watch?v=r2o6eBR7Y8o

wheelchair version (kek):
youtube.com/watch?v=M8g_ipX6xss

girl jogger version:
youtube.com/watch?v=QSjCVMLgM7s

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2826512/New-York-jewellery-thief-snatched-250-000-worth-valuables-London-boutiques-caught-leaving-mobile-phone-scene-crime-selfie-screensaver.html

^This guy did it dozens of times, no problems, but he left his phone behind at the scene of his last crime with his selfies on it. dumb mistake.

youtube.com/watch?v=r2o6eBR7Y8o
This guy took a $180k diamond, but left finger prints behind AND he had a criminal record, so cops identified him easily and nabbed him at the airport. silly mistake.

Some statistics from America:
>17.2% of all grab and run crimes reported to JSA resulted in arrests by law enforcement.
jewelerssecurity.org/pdf/2015 Stats with charts.pdf

So 83% success rate, but that figure includes opportunists who do grab and runs without any planning, out of shape old people, ppl drunk or high on drugs, or have criminal records, or do it multiple times in one day...so with proper planning and execution I think you can easily get the success rate to 95%, maybe even higher...specially if you're in good physical shape and select an old or fat target that can't run.

I also noticed quite a few people got caught because they were recognized by locals where they live, so to counter this possibility it's best to do it out of state or out of country, ideally.

Another risk factor is pawning/selling/fencing the items. But i've researched that aspect quite a lot and the risk is basically 0 for me, hypothetically. This is just day dreaming of course.

>sperg autist ponders crime

This is lulz