Log Entry #69: Catch You If I Can

It is so much easier to take than to earn.

A very pragmatic truism that many people use in their daily jobs as they labor to steal hard-earned money from others. Yes, no matter what some may believe, stealing is a job… of sorts. It takes time, commitment, and effort to do. You may disagree with that, but it does not make it any less true.

By no stretch of the imagination, could I be considered a law-abiding citizen; then again, it depends on whose laws I am being judged by. But this is not about me, though I did some things that could be considered illegal; the kind of things that earn you a long stretch of time locked away in a small cell. All that money I… acquired from the people that declared themselves our enemies, was something a law-abiding citizen would never do. The law doesn’t care if you steal from thieves or decent people, and that seems silly to me. Look at Robin Hood and all the good he had done (even if he was just a made-up character). The truth is that some of those who made such laws are worse crooks than the individuals they wanted to punish; I guess that is one way to deal with the competition. It is a ‘do as I say, don’t do as I do’ kind of thing. Well, I’m not sorry, and they can’t do anything about it.

In fact, so many things that I did could be considered criminal; any district attorney would give his left… eye (or some other spherical part of the body), for a chance of prosecuting me. I made a list (for fun) of the deeds they could put into an indictment and here are a few highlights: hacking, grand theft of satellites (that would be a first), illegally mining and selling gold, practicing medicine without the license, mass murder by kinetic weapons… the list goes on for quite some time. Then there is the whole thing with false identities I created, which could put me in hot water if discovered. Taking treasures from sunken ships is also a big no-no, only governments are allowed to do that.

If you go by all this, I am a hard-core criminal, but since we have our own country now, and I get a say about the laws by which it will be governed—I’m giving myself a free pass. That is the trick of the whole thing, the laws are there to make a person obey some arbitrary rules, and society attempts to minimize the danger from those that want to take advantage of you… it doesn’t always work.

Most laws are created after the fact; they are the response to a situation people found unacceptable. They grow over time and are sometimes used in a way those who created them never imagined or wanted.

Having said that, I am OK with laws… in general.

What I have a problem with are those who break them to take from ordinary people; I don’t get all worked up when banks and governments are robbed, it is an occupational hazard. But, when an ordinary Joe, who works hard to provide for his family, gets robbed because he is too gullible to know better… that gets on my nerves.

Ponzi schemes, identity theft, funeral and cemetery fraud, fraud against seniors, advance-fee schemes, pyramid schemes, telemarketing fraud... should I go on? Check your spam email folders, there are bound to be some offers there that can be placed in at least one of the aforementioned categories, or some others I know about. People have become so accustomed to this they barely notice, it has become that common. Consequently, when a bunch of emails targeted the S.U. population, and were of that particular substance… it hit a nerve and I decided to go on a little crusade of my own.

I dealt with similar pests before, but it takes a lot of effort and time to police that kind of action, and as soon as you put the transgressors away—a new crop emerges to fill in the newly created vacuum. In view of that, I concentrated mostly on keeping the S.U. safe from those leeches, and the world… well, they should take care of those things themselves; I am not everyone’s guardian.

The whole thing started rather innocuously; who doesn’t receive spam emails? The Solarian Union shouldn’t… in theory. The MI that controls traffic between Earth and us is good at its job; I placed it there with strict orders to supervise everything. Looking through all communication with Earth gets boring—really quick, so I didn’t want to bother with it personally. Statistically, everyone makes mistakes, so it let some spam through, which is not the end of the world, but this time it had unforeseen consequences.

The crooks that do this kind of thing are working on a percentage. Of a thousand emails they sent, if only one hooks something, they call it a success. When most people receive those kinds of emails, they give a small laugh and delete the stupid thing… Mrs. Roberts did not.

She was a nice old lady that came when the Governments on Earth released families of our people, her daughter was one of Dr. Ross’s star pupils, part of the think tank that gave many insights into what we would need to live in space. Her mother was in her seventies, even if one would not think so by simply looking at her. With a CEI, medical nanites, and the procedures she went through, nobody would guess her at more than fifty. Internally she was more in the neighborhood of twenty-five, but that didn’t change her demeanor. She was nice to everyone and frequently baked great batches of homemade cookies that she freely gave to people in Central Park. A caring and giving person any community would want to have. She wasn’t much into the Internet and new technologies before, but I think she had fun discovering all the cool stuff her implants enabled her to do.

An unscrupulous dirtbag got some information on her through a cooking forum she liked and sent her a friendly email that she responded to. The conversation went for some time before they asked her help for a sick child in need of a heart transplant operation. And you know what, she emptied almost all her life savings to help. I know some of you would call her an idiot, to give away so much money on account of a few emails, but this con artist was good. He knew just the right buttons to push to activate those maternal instincts in her.

Then all communication ceased and after a while, she got worried about the welfare of a sick child. Mrs. Roberts asked Elizabeth to see if there was something we could do to help, and Liz told me.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the whole thing was a confidence scheme and that it went right past me. It would be safe to say that I was… freaking livid.

(FYI, do not make an AI angry, it never ends up well for the guilty party.) So, I started to dig into the entire affair, while transferring back every cent Mrs. Roberts gave away from her accounts, telling her that I will take care of all the bills for the (imaginary) sick child. What? You thought I would tell her that she had been taken for a ride… not a chance. Elizabeth loves that lady, and she will live in ignorant bliss, unaware of SOBs out there.

It wasn’t a one-man operation, it was an entire organization that made hundreds of millions annually doing exactly this sort of thing. They were from all over the world, connected through a Darknet, and very hard to pinpoint. Oh, did I tell you that I took over the entire Darknet some time ago? OK, maybe not ‘took over’ per se, but my MIs are monitoring it. (It was there, I had some free time, that kind of thing.)

I collected every piece of information about the group and then I struck. Taking all their money was a given, but it felt kind of unfulfilling. The punishment did not fit the crime… I wanted more.

As it happens, those individuals managed to get into the accounts of chiefs of police in their respective countries and stole a lot of money. Would you believe it that all of them were so careless—they may as well have left their home addresses (really, even a rookie cyber investigator could find them). When the police made the arrests (coordinated all over the world), they found so much damning evidence on their computers, it was unbelievable. (Well, that’s the way I roll.)

Yet, I was still unsatisfied, it was not enough; there were so many others out there that did the same evil deeds and got away scot-free. Therefore, I started my crusade, to find all those that were guilty of stealing from innocents and to liberate them from their Ill-gotten gains. Ares helped, and soon we had to establish a charity foundation that helped the victims of digital theft. It somehow felt like it was dirty money and I wanted to help those people like Mrs. Roberts.

I love a target-rich environment.

So, if you are reading this, and are in any way involved in fake support calls, phishing, pay up or be arrested scam, or any other kind of thieving and deceiving behavior… be prepared. I will be taking an interest in you, very soon, and you'll rue the day you were born.

Dirty Harry’s said it best, “You’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky? Well… do you punk?”

No matter, this AI will take you down.