There are lots of ways to make money these days: wages, salaries, tips, taking our socially awkward but brilliant-at-math brother to the casino…
But sometimes people try to make a buck through shortcuts, schemes and scandal… like the guy who tried to manipulate the stock market with bombs.
Anybody who knows anything about investing knows that the main idea is simple: buy shares when the price is low, and when they go up, you can sell and make a profit.
Of course, it can be extra hard figuring out which stocks or other financial instruments to buy, and when, and how to end up with more money than you had when you started.
There’s a reason there are so many professional investors out there; it’s a complicated business.
Now if you knew a stock price was going to fall for a time but then go back up, assuming you also somehow didn’t run afoul of insider trading rules, you could guarantee yourself a profit.
A guy in Florida figured the best way to know when a dip was coming was to create one, and so he started putting together a plan.
As Now I Know explains, he started building homemade bombs inside packages of groceries – boxes of instant potatoes, pasta, breakfast bars, stuff like that.
He figured if those bombs ended up exploding on the shelves of a single retail chain, it would tank their stock price for a while.
He would then buy up as much stock as he could, and then stop setting off bombs, which would cause the price to recover.
According to authorities, the would-be bomber said something like “If someone has to die so that I can make some money, so be it.”
This fellow was on a conditional release program, meaning he had an ankle monitor and limits on his movement.
So he wanted to have one of his friends drive up and down the east coast, leaving these incendiary devices on the shelves of Target stores.
And that’s where the plan fell apart: the non-accomplice went to authorities about the bomber, who ended up with a 40 year prison sentence.
By the way, he could have made some money and stayed out of the joint if he’d just 86ed the bombing part of his plan.
The whole time that he was planning to force Target’s stock to go up with this screwy bomb idea, the stock went up on its own.
Here’s another low moment in crime history.
A guy in Ohio gave a bank teller a note that said “give me the” and had the word “gun” underneath it.
But there was a blank after the word “the” so he hadn’t quite demanded anything!
He later admitted that he wanted to write the word “money” but he was so high he forgot.
But he was charged with attempted bank robbery anyway.
THE WORST WAY TO TARGET A LOWER STOCK PRICE? (Now I Know)
Alleged Ohio bank robber forgot to write ‘money’ on demand note because he was high (WCHS)