Professor Marcus, hands down.
TQB
Clint Eastwood - he escaped from teh Alcatraz lol
Not really a “mastermind” as he was caught, but (Lightning) Lee Murray has a pretty interesting story.
[quote]PimpBot5000 wrote:
Not really a “mastermind” as he was caught, but (Lightning) Lee Murray has a pretty interesting story.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Murray[/quote]
thanks man. There is a great documentary about it on youtube. Also, They are gonna make a movie about it.
[quote]marathe wrote:
How about the 20 or so people at J.P. Morgan who created industrial derivatives and then turned shitty mortgages into gold-ranked investments and in so doing pretty well broke the world?
They’ve got to be up there.
No wait, Obama. I said it first. (that’s a joke. Obama’s the man: see here: P080910PS-0356 | President Barack Obama jokingly puts his to… | Flickr)[/quote]
Haha nice. Your post got me thinking of Bernie Madoff, as in “made off with all that money.” I really hate it however how he got like 150 years for running an operation any half-informed investor would atleast inquiry about before giving him their whole savings. A lot of his clients were rich Hollywood types, which is why it became such front page news. Honestly, I have no sympathy for Kevin Bacon (mmm yum bacon) and him losing his money.
DB Cooper, DB Cooper didnt think of him.
Joseph Mengele
John d Rockefeller
And the king of the world, The Rothschilds family.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I wouldn’t say he was the greatest mind, intelligence-wise, but my vote would go to Howard Hughes. I just read this wild book about his time in Vegas and then abroad between the late 50’s to about '75 or '76. This guy literally tried to buy the whole country. Vegas was just a monopoly game for him and he was able to use his wealth and clout to violate virtually every anti-trust law in existence at the time in a successful attempt to buy every casino available.
He bribed or outright bought everyone, from LBJ to Nixon (several times) to RFK to all sorts of lower level politicians, including several Attorney Generals, virtually every politician from Nevada and the Atomic Energy Commission. He was the single largest supplier of surveillance equipment to the CIA.
But his dealings with Nixon and LBJ were the wildest. He bribed everyone who could be bought to avoid anti-trust laws, fraudently manipulated the stock of TWA and ABC in order to buy them outright, again in violation of many laws that the people he bribed simply created loopholes in specifically for him. His medical foundation was nothing more than a front so that he could literally donate money to himself, tax-free.
When Congress moved to change these laws, he successfully bribed all the right people until they made a loophole for medical foundations strictly so that he could continue to siphon money. In 1968, his estimated wealth was more than 1.3 billion! And he had paid less than a million in taxes between 1956 and 1968.
His illegal campaign contributions in exchange for favors were wild too. His bagman, Robert Maheu, went around with bundles of hundred dollar bills fraudently skimmed from his casinos to bribe everyone from Governor Laxalt of Nevada to Nixon himself. In fact, he even bribed Larry O’Brien, the head of the DNC, and hired him as a “consultant”, namely to act as his point man on all sorts of political fixings, all while O’Brien was the head of the DNC.
O’Brien was also the head of JFK and RFK’s political teams and as such, Nixon hated him and feared that he knew that Nixon had accepted almost half a million in cash bribes since 1960 from Hughes. This is what started Watergate: the insatiable need for Nixon to get dirt on O’Brien and find out all he knew about Nixon’s own illegal dealings.
But what makes Hughes the successful “mastermind” that he was, is that not only was he NEVER caught, he accomplished all this while never being seen by anybody! The FBI was asked by LBJ to investigate whether or not the most powerful man in the world even existed or not, and the FBI wouldn’t even touch it! He got away with everything while the whole fucking government collapsed around him during Watergate, which he had started.
This fucking guy had Henry Kissinger ready to reveal all sorts of top-secret info about nuke testing, LBJ and Nixon practically begged him for illegal cash, he avoided ever having to appear in public despite the constant litigation against him (which he always won) revolving around his anti-trust violations, and he was the biggest contractor with the CIA and one of the largest defense contractors in the world, and you could count on one hand how many people saw and spoke to him face to face the last twenty years of his life. [/quote]
I need to read this book, what is it. That is captivating
[quote]horsepuss wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I wouldn’t say he was the greatest mind, intelligence-wise, but my vote would go to Howard Hughes. I just read this wild book about his time in Vegas and then abroad between the late 50’s to about '75 or '76. This guy literally tried to buy the whole country. Vegas was just a monopoly game for him and he was able to use his wealth and clout to violate virtually every anti-trust law in existence at the time in a successful attempt to buy every casino available.
He bribed or outright bought everyone, from LBJ to Nixon (several times) to RFK to all sorts of lower level politicians, including several Attorney Generals, virtually every politician from Nevada and the Atomic Energy Commission. He was the single largest supplier of surveillance equipment to the CIA.
But his dealings with Nixon and LBJ were the wildest. He bribed everyone who could be bought to avoid anti-trust laws, fraudently manipulated the stock of TWA and ABC in order to buy them outright, again in violation of many laws that the people he bribed simply created loopholes in specifically for him. His medical foundation was nothing more than a front so that he could literally donate money to himself, tax-free.
When Congress moved to change these laws, he successfully bribed all the right people until they made a loophole for medical foundations strictly so that he could continue to siphon money. In 1968, his estimated wealth was more than 1.3 billion! And he had paid less than a million in taxes between 1956 and 1968.
His illegal campaign contributions in exchange for favors were wild too. His bagman, Robert Maheu, went around with bundles of hundred dollar bills fraudently skimmed from his casinos to bribe everyone from Governor Laxalt of Nevada to Nixon himself. In fact, he even bribed Larry O’Brien, the head of the DNC, and hired him as a “consultant”, namely to act as his point man on all sorts of political fixings, all while O’Brien was the head of the DNC.
O’Brien was also the head of JFK and RFK’s political teams and as such, Nixon hated him and feared that he knew that Nixon had accepted almost half a million in cash bribes since 1960 from Hughes. This is what started Watergate: the insatiable need for Nixon to get dirt on O’Brien and find out all he knew about Nixon’s own illegal dealings.
But what makes Hughes the successful “mastermind” that he was, is that not only was he NEVER caught, he accomplished all this while never being seen by anybody! The FBI was asked by LBJ to investigate whether or not the most powerful man in the world even existed or not, and the FBI wouldn’t even touch it! He got away with everything while the whole fucking government collapsed around him during Watergate, which he had started.
This fucking guy had Henry Kissinger ready to reveal all sorts of top-secret info about nuke testing, LBJ and Nixon practically begged him for illegal cash, he avoided ever having to appear in public despite the constant litigation against him (which he always won) revolving around his anti-trust violations, and he was the biggest contractor with the CIA and one of the largest defense contractors in the world, and you could count on one hand how many people saw and spoke to him face to face the last twenty years of his life. [/quote]
I need to read this book, what is it. That is captivating[/quote]
Citizen Hughes by Michael Drosnin. PM when you finish it and let me know what you thought of it.
Professor James Moriarty.
Al Capone. Made about $100 million a year during the Prohibition from illegal activities. Plus, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre has to be one of the slickest crimes ever planned.
My vote goes to Hughes after DBCoopers post. The word “greatest” settles it.
[quote]dk44 wrote:
Crazy how planned out this heist was. A freaking Helicopter! Awesome.
[/quote]
That thing made it all the way to you?
They didn’t use explosives to get into the building. The glass roof was just plain glass, so they just used a sledgehammer.
No bomb by the police helicopters, just a goddamn box marked “BOMB”. But most of the guys seem to get convicted now.
[quote]Cprimero wrote:
[quote]SeanParent wrote:
Wait…please explain? I did not hear about this
[quote]JSMaxwell wrote:
[quote]pro.nub wrote:
The best criminal masterminds would never be heard of because they wouldn’t be caught. I always think of this when you see the “top 20 criminals of all time” in magazines. They wouldn’t be the best criminals of all time, they’d be the best criminals that got caught.[/quote]
How about that assassination that was carried out back in February? I think it was 8 people, disguise changes, coordinated movements in a hotel. It was like something out of a movie.
[/quote]
[/quote]
It was a Mossad hit on Islamic terrorists[/quote]
With a cattle prod, no less. Apparently his heart was weak and couldn’t take it. Shame, that.
George Soros.
Jewish, but hid his identity and collaborated with the Nazis to find and locate Jewish people to send to the camps — and to take their stuff.
This blood money served as the seed money for his great fortune.
He remains unrependant, saying in his auotbiography that his collaboration with the Nazis was the “greatest time in his life.”
I personally can’t think of a more suceessful, and truely evil, person.
Can someone call the Mossad already?
[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
Al Capone. Made about $100 million a year during the Prohibition from illegal activities. Plus, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre has to be one of the slickest crimes ever planned.[/quote]
Yeah but he got busted on tax evasion.
You mean they created laws in order to catch him for tax evasion.
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
You mean they created laws in order to catch him for tax evasion.[/quote]
Yeah yeah. My point was he got busted, Now I understand he still ran shit on the inside but he got busted so he doesnt count. My definition of the best are the guys who never went down for there crimes.
[quote]horsepuss wrote:
[quote]MattyG35 wrote:
You mean they created laws in order to catch him for tax evasion.[/quote]
Yeah yeah. My point was he got busted, Now I understand he still ran shit on the inside but he got busted so he doesnt count. My definition of the best are the guys who never went down for there crimes.[/quote]
I agree. Getting caught or killed as a result of said crimes (Pablo Escobar) discounts someone from being on the list. There’s plenty of criminals who’ve pulled off comparable shit to Escobar or Capone and never went down for it. Also, they have to presided over some sort of criminal enterprise rather than been a lone criminal (Zodiac Killer), since as successful as the Zodiac Killer or some other unknown killer may have been, his/their crimes don’t carry the same magnitude when weighed against someone who has to successfully carry out crimes large enough to garner large-scale attention and balance his employees/cronies/etc at the same time. Special consideration should be given to those who also successfully played various people/factions/entities against one another.
Although I loathe putting him on the list due to who he is, and although I’m equally loathe to say that he is a “mastermind”, I think that Osama bin Laden should a spot on the list, if not the top. I mean fuck, he’s the world’s most wanted criminal and he hasn’t been caught…yet.
Others who could legitimately lay claim to the title of the world’s greatest CURRENT criminal masterminds:
Matteo Messina Denaro: by all accounts the new head of the Sicilian/Italian mafia
Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov: head of the Russian mafia, hasn’t been caught yet
Joaquin Guzman: this fucker is the head of the Mexican cartel Sinaloa. $5 million price on his head and no one’s caught him yet either.
But all these fuckers are going down at some point. If they die of natural causes or from something that isn’t a direct result of their criminal activities, then maybe they can lay claim to the greatest criminal mastermind of all time. But as of now, my vote still goes to Howard Hughes. I’d like to say DB Cooper, but shit, I dropped all that cash on my way out of the plane…
Owney Madden.
What makes him notable? He died a free man- not in jail, and not on the end of a revolver. He was that good that he lived the life, and fuckin RETIRED. The dude pretty much ran Manhattan for a time.
And then Whitey Bulger up in Boston, and Al Capone back in the day in Chitown. Hard to top them cats.