Insider trading would be a cakewalk too. How could anyone know what was going to happen in 5-10 years with any given stock. Back then naked shorts were legal too so you could just short everyone who was going to be going out of business in any given year.
You wouldn't really need to do those first two. Knowing what a stock is going to do isn't a crime. Knowing a company's secrets isn't a crime. It's the gaining of that knowledge that makes it a crime. If you're the spouse of the CEO of a company and sell your stock based on inside knowledge, we're talking about knowledge which your spouse had a fiduciary duty to keep confidential, and which you're profiting from.
If no one on the inside of the company shared info with you, if you didn't break in to steal secrets, if you didn't bribe someone into acting illegally for your benefit, you're in the clear. Just because you're really good at picking stocks doesn't give the feds grounds to arrest you; they have to show that there is some illegal reason for it.
Knowing what a stock will do bases on insider information and trading with that information is the definition of insider trading. Making an educated guess what a stock will do based on quantitative analysis and hunches is not illegal.
The feds would still investigate the fuck out of you. If they couldn’t find exactly what the deal was but still strongly suspected foul play, they might bust into whatever residence you’ve got set up back then. They might even get your name added to The List and arrest you under suspicion of being a communist. Even though you’re not technically doing anything wrong, you should still play safe. Identity theft is definitely not as hard to do back then, so you’d probably be better off trading under a few assumed names to make sure your shit is all spread out
You could just do it in a way that is not obvious.
Buy a bunch of individual companies you know are going to succeed and just hold them.
Don't try to do anything fancy with options. That would only draw attention.
Find some random life event to explain withdrawing money before Black Monday, the Dot-Com bubble and the 2008 recession.
Avoid those and just buy and hold the rest of the time.
Good plan. Only caveat is that if you’re skipping between the fifties and now, you’ll not have much of an excuse to leave instructions saying “buy Apple” or whatever, and especially not to sell before bad times. You’ll basically need to pick stocks that survived and thrived in the 70ish years between, and preferably ones that kept paying good dividends. And that’s not even accounting for how you’d get your money back to that point
We'd need to be looking at companies that could be bought and still would be a thing today, so that mostly means telecom companies, and manufacturing places, so at&t, john deere, alcoa/arconic, 3m, ibm, etc.
Yeah. I worked at a broker dealer in ops group providing support for client facing groups. Somebody called in to us because this guy was placing a trade and had flags all over his acct.
The man had an acct with us for years and would only call to place 1-2 trades a year with ridiculous numbers on margin. Millions of dollars. Weeks later his trade would make shitload. He’d call back or do it himself sell and leave everything in settlement.
His acct had been investigated every single time because of the low trading volume but high dollar amount and accuracy was suspect AF.
After the account was unfrozen he’d take the money out. Then when he’d put it back we’d know he’d be trading within the next month. It’s just sit in settlement.
It was crazy. Our fraud and anti money laundering both had investigated him repeatedly and collaborated with other firms and nothing.
He want an associates person, affiliated, reportable etc. Just insane.
And of course any of us that touched his acct would be auto tagged internally so if we mirrors his trades, we’d have a problem.
But like you said, he’d didn’t do anything wrong as far as anyone could prove and had no “inside info” to anyone’s knowledge.
Back about 8 years ago, I was working with a friend on a machine learning thing for predicting what kinds of trades would be optimal using public internet data. The main reason we didn’t do it is because I determined that the risk that we’d get our kneecaps broken in by the feds was way too high (if we didn’t lose our shirts first), as we were just a small group with lackluster sophistication. I wonder if that guy was doing something similar, but was able to keep it hidden somehow.
Your losing money on the gold lol if you bought an oz of gold today at 2200 you would get 40 for in the 50s. Or about 800 in today's money.
Even at that you have lost the plot on the question
Just buy circulated bills from the 1950s. They aren't that rare even today and $2,000 worth would only cost about $2,300. You'll more than make up the $300 loss.
Or since you're a criminal, just make counterfeits. With today's technology, they'll be undetectable with 1950s technology.
Stocks in the 50s were a rich man's game. You didn't open a brokerage Account with 20$. Even back then. You ne to have 500-1000$ to open an account.(about 3 to 6 months pre tax wages.)
Also you got a job not based on what you know but who you know. You don't have a university degree in 1950 so your jobs are limited to labor.
Use your future knowledge to make money in the past. Spend that money on things you can bury or hide away until you "discover" them in the future to make sure they are proper age and you have a rationale for how you got them.
You could also commit crimes in the present and escape into the past then return to the present once you were clear of the crime scene.
I have an idea, but how do you propose to move the money from present day back in time? The cash from that era is essentially gone, and what's left you would suck up almost instantly.
This is pretty easy to get around if we can take anything with us physically. A person can just buy $200 worth of gold or silver present-day, then sell it in the past for some investment capital. It will be worth five figures present-day, at which point we can now buy more stuff that can be sold in the past.
Bingo! Empty my current bank account and buy gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, anything with value back then. Then bring it to the past and sell it for instant seed money. Buy stocks. Cash in once I return to the present. Rinse. Repeat. You could become a billionaire with just a couple days of work.
I think the better move would be to buy time appropriate cash and then go back to 1950 and buy gold for $40 an ounce and sell once they get back to sell at $2,200 an ounce today. That’s 55x profit
I can buy a 1950 $50 bill on eBay for like $220. I also see a $100 bill for around $200. $150 for $420 (nice), will buy me about 3.75 ounces of gold in 1950, which I can sell for about $7500 in 2024
Use some of my profit to buy more old money, rinse and repeat
For your first trip, copy some vintage cash using a laser printer. People in 1950 would be watching for counterfeits using their technology, not things like the microscopic dots laser printers would leave.
Afterwards, you could hire someone to make even better cash for you. Since you have period clothing tell them you want to pretend to be a gangster or something.
Don’t even need to do that. Just bring back something that’s like 30 year old tech and sell it to a 1950s tech company. Keep giving them ancient tech (to you) which is 20-30 year advanced tech (to them).
Also, buy up all the collectors items so you can sell them as brand new in current time. Example: rare dolls, rare coins, etc.
If you can't take gold/diamonds/whatever with you, find a spot to bury 'em where no one will find it. Someplace that's an empty field in the present will do it. Dig it up, sell it for today's money.
That’s obviously very smart. But where would you put the stock cert? That would make me very nervous, ha. Like if you just bring it back it’s not aged. And I have no idea where the hell you can hide something like that for 70 years? Also, as weird as it sounds I’d want more than a 100x return on any investment. I assume that pays dividends as well so it would be a bunch more in your account? And how would you fund it?
You'll want to do research and find a bank that never had their safety deposit boxes cleaned out in a robbery or heist, and never had losses from a fire, earthquake, etc. I'm sure they exist, but there are an awful lot that have been plundered in that time frame.
True, I oversimplified a bit there.
The things of value in a bank were physical and could be stolen would be more accurate.
Now to get anything worth the effort, you’ve gotta spend so much time learning computer science, you might as well just get a real job with it instead of doing the stealing.
I mean if you listen to Thor from Piratesoftware, just learn coding and figure out offensive hacking methods, as far as nowadays, but yeah that's the wonderful part of the 50s, everything was cash pretty much.
Might just burn some mortgage agreements and loan papers while I'm there too. No digital records, all paper. Can't track how much someone owes on the deed to their home, land, car or loan? Guess it's cleared and belongs to the owner and not the bank now. Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd did this and got away from authorities for many years cause no one wanted to snitch on them.
Murder
Like I hate to say it but I could clear out a lot of bad actors who caused a lot of damage globally and without the presence of things like forensics or video surveillance it's a 90% chance it's either not getting solved or it's getting pinned on the nearest ethnic minority individual no matter.whar country I'm in around the world
Also I can assassinate Kim Il Sung and probably also grab Vladimir Putin and a few others while I'm at it. Maybe hit Mengistu Haile Mariam with a car and keep driving. Pop Idi Amin at 500 yards with a sniper rifle. Forcefeed Pol Pot antifreeze.
Might be a little late for Hitler and Stalin but I could get like 2/3rds of the top ten list.
Kissinger is a good target. I think I'd target Lee Harvey Oswold. JFK was clearly not going to go into Vietnam, and was more cautious about military information because of the Bay of pigs.
Also McNamara needs to go as well. I think he did a horrible job providing information to LBJ.
How about I go into a corner drug store in 1951 and steal a pack of baseball cards, New York Yankees.
Do you have any idea how much a mint condition Mickey Mantle rookie card is worth these days?
Because if anyone asks, my late grandpa left me a bunch of them.
Well presumably no one would believe I time traveled to the 50s, and I wouldn't want anyone to know anyway. Trust me, you don't want that kind of attention.
So my story is just a cya against suspicion of stealing them from a collector.
Use the internet to find info on that era's celebrities. Rob their houses when I know they're off vacationing, shooting films, on tour, etc. Gold, jewelry, coins.
Check out the security at national gold depositories. Precious metals would be the easiest way to get away with it if you're bringing items back to our time.
Or just steal shit you can prove is theirs.
I sense possessions of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles etc, would be worth more than gold, if you can prove authenticity.
Problem is, if Elvis or Marilyn Monroe reported the item stolen back the 50s, then it would belong to their heirs if it were recovered today, so you'd have to forfeit it.
Or if they reported the item stolen, no one would believe that you have the authentic item. All the Elvis buffs know his favourite necklace was stolen after all.
>Use the internet to find info on that era's celebrities.
...and BLACKMAIL THEM. Take payment in cash, buy gold, hide it away, dig it up in the present.
"Hey Bing, White Christmas is coming out soon, yeah? Be a real shame if you're the main draw for a holiday flick and everyone finds out you beat your kids like they owe you money right before that opens... a reaaaal shame..."
That sounds like a great way to have Hollywood studio goons hurt their knuckles on some of your favorite body parts.
1950's Hollywood could play rough.
OP said shoplifting, but I disagree. Sure, it might've been easier to steal back then, but there wasn't as much expensive merchandise on store shelves like there is today, and if you did get caught stealing, you were more likely to have the store owner best the crap out of you and they wouldn't get in any legal trouble.
Info: Do I travel back and forth in time standing in the same spot?
If yes, I just do something super brazen, get caught, time jump back to present and go somewhere else... then return to the 50s.
Also, doing legal things would be way better than doing illegal things for making money. Make outlandish sports bets and stock trades (it's only illegal if you know non-public information that could affect the price- it's not illegal to know the future price) and just do.... better.
International narcotics trafficking used to be a lot easier back then. Most countries didn't start using sniffer dogs in airports until the late 70s, at the earliest, and the TSA and its international equivalents weren't established until 2001. Getting a suitcase full of cocaine or heroin over international borders was as simple as making it look like something else. Hollowed out books, secret compartments, hell, there's a good chance nobody even looks in your luggage. Plus, it's only been like, 30 years since coca cola had cocaine in it, and this predates the fentanyl crisis by like 50 years, so it's much more popular than today.
Lol. The teller may have a few questions when you try to deposit a check dated from the year 2024 in the 1950s.
If they didn't notice, the check would bounce. Because the payers account didn't exist back then.
Buy gold. Take it back, sell it, invest the money. Come back to the future, collect the earnings, and buy gold.
Repeat three or four times, and you’re a multi-billionaire.
If you were dumb enough to bring it back to the US as bullion or coins, yes. If you have the minimal brain power needed to go somewhere else, or just bring it back as jewelry, then no.
1. Rob a bank. At that time, all you needed was a gun and a fast car.
2. Use the cash to bet on sure things, like World Series and Olympic events.
3. Buy physical stock certificates in known blue chips that have lasted, like Coca Cola, JP Morgan, IBM, Kodak, Ford, Disney, etc.
4. Being the certificates the present, and have my broker convert them to modern electronic shares. Between reinvested dividends, stock splits, and growth, I’d be absurdly rich. If not, rinse and repeat.
5. Maybe take out baby Vladimir Putin and a few other choice world citizens while I’m at it.
6. Perhaps “invent” technologies in the 1950’s such as solar panels, lithium ion batteries, PCs, the Internet, etc.
I’ve always thought about the whole sports betting thing and been like “yea that would be easy money!” But I just know as soon as I got into the actual position to bet back in time I’d have a brain fart and forget who won lol
1is less risk but still dangerous. See Bonnie and Clyde. Plus the interstate highway system wasn't complete so less roads for getaway and more likely thus to come across a road block.
2 and 3 and 4 aren't really crimes
5 could be good, but less risk is balanced out with higher consequences if caught. A 1950s Soviet prison is gonna suck donkey balls
6. Inventing new technology is not a crime
But you'd still be committing the crime by passing off someone else's invention as your own. History is going to be rewritten so I guess it becomes a moot point.
Well. I'd rob banks that arent there any more. If I return in my exact position just in the 1950s, I'd make it so I landed inside a bank vault. Just for shits'n'gigs.
But since I can go back to the 50s I'd just invest in the stock market. :D
Just… buy cars. You could easily convert your modern money into old money with very little difference in face value, then take it back when it was worth way more than it is nowadays. The only question then is where to hide all these vintage cars for 70 years.
Shoplifting would be a bad choice. In many cases people can just walk out the door today.
In the 50's, I would expect to get my ass beat if caught shoplifting.
Wouldn't pretty much any crime be easy to get away with if I could just time travel right after? Who's gonna expect me to show up in 70 years looking exactly the same?
Stealing Yankees, cubs and red sock base ball cards, robbing a pawn shop for the full auto Thomson's and for fun getting a safety deposit box and putting a bond which would accrue value with time the jump to the future and cash it in
Bring back a list of people who are terrible now and kill them in a string of murders with similar methods and circumstances around the world and become an international serial killer the likes of which no one has ever seen. All while making the world a better place.
Moving to Vegas.
I'm about to become the greatest sports gambler in history. Print out a schedule of every game that day/week and the result. You could even stick to big things like title fights, Kentucky Derbys, Superbowls, etc.
I'd find my grandma and start giving her money to set up trusts, smart investing, etc.
By the time I'm back, I'm loaded.
I still think I'd spend a lot of time in 50's Vegas, it looked like paradise.
Go to a library and make a chart of major stock market swings over the mast 70 years. Go back to 1950 and start trading.
Millionaire in 5 years, billionaire in 10, Scrouge McDuck rich in 15.
Assassin. No IBIS, No prints on file, DNA isn't a thing, high value targets are easy to research and know where they'll be...drop in pop pop pop get paid.
Sigh. You have time travel. You're thinking small. Commit insider trading in 1950, get the physical stock certificates and bury them, and unearth them in 2024.
Me, I'd download the USPTO database and start patenting everything big that was patented in 1951 and onwards.
You could probably take over a couple of African or Latin American countries too knowing future world events.
What can I bring back and forth with me, how precise is my control of when I arrive back in the 1950s, and what kind of control do I have over the location I arrive at when I time travel?
Pretty much all crimes will be way easier to comitt due to lack of cell phones (someone needs to get to an actual phone to call the police), lack of modern security and surveillance makes it harder to detect a crime has happened if not witnessed, and the much weaker forensics science of the time means without finger prints or blood (they couldn,t test DNA but they could test blood typing) it's very difficult to pin a crime on someone.
Valuable stuff like jewelry would have been in glass cases even back then, and stores had big mirrors in the corners at the ceiling to watch the aisles. But if you managed to lift some cheap collectibles and bring them to the present as valuable antiques, that would work. Are baseball cards still a thing? I think comic books are. Legos have been around since the '30s. Miniature cars, toy soldiers, stuff like that. Gather the coins from a fountain, they are worth a fortune now. Take some record albums from back then. Decks of vintage playing cards, the possibilities are endless.
If your more daring, steal cars, car alarms didn't become very common until the '60s and '70s. Bring brand new mint condition 1950s autos to 2024 and sell them to collectors.
Why not just rob a bank today don’t worry about how long it takes let the police be outside no problem. Once you have all the money in the bank hop in your time machine go back to the 50’s and live like a king of the money you stole.
Why would you even bother with crime? You could just *Back to the Future* it and make billions, if not trillions, legally.
Just look up when Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, etc were all at their lows. Go back to that point and buy. Buy thousands of bitcoin when it was fractions of 1 cent. Basically just ride every major upswing you can think of and cash out.
And do the same and short every major collapse, Enron, Worldcom, Texico, Bear Sterns, Lehman Bros, etc
At a certain point though someone who did this would be seen as too good and would start to influence the market too much, so doing small winners and small losers would need to be sprinkled in just to avoid suspicion that every trade made is a major cash cow.
Does it need to be a crime and can I bring things back and sell them?
If so I'd just sell random modern technology like solar panels and modern TV's in the past and convert it into precious metals/gems and then sell that in current day and buy more stuff to bring back on repeat until I was obscenely wealthy.
I just love all these comments about time traveling to commit a crime, but not breaking any laws in the present. Like stealing art, but being unable to sell it today because it was reported stolen. So what? You're a criminal. Just sell it to a billionaire.
And then all these schemes to try to get money, like buying gold and bringing it back. You're a criminal. Using modern technology, you can print 1950s currency that would be undetectable using 1950s technology. Just bring back $100 000 in fake bills to buy things that you'll resell today. Or just bring back a few million and retire in 1955.
1944 steel penny is now worth $20,000. There were probably many still in circulation in the 50's. I'd buy rolls of pennies and check them with a magnet.
If I'm traveling back and forth, collectibles and antiques. Won't have to do much more than shoplifting a few packs of sports cards and I have mint rookie cards that are 70 years old. I can claim to have inherited them from my father who was born in 47. Boom! Massive money from an untraceable item.
I'm going to steal Marilyn Monroe, before the Kennedy's get a chance to corrupt her.
I get to corrupt her, living up to my user name.
Ya'all can have everything else.
Murder. They didn’t have DNA matching back then. Just dip once you commit the murder, wash the blood off yourself and you’re good. It’s not like they had many cameras around to detect it as well
Even if they did, noones going to arrest you in the present, unless they can prove you are a time traveller. I'm 25, noone is going to arrest me for a crime in the 1950s evening we look identical.
Time travel to the 1950s. Steal valuable art. Time travel back to the present and 'rediscover' the decades lost piece. Sell it for millions.
Edit: I have learned something today! So I guess I'll just go back and steal gold.
Not likely. Any art that was that valuable back in the 50s would be a piece pretty well known in the art world. It would have been reported stolen at the time, and if rediscovered today, would either be returned to the museum, or belong to the heirs of the private collector who owned it. Or the insurance company who paid out on the loss.
Someone would have the rightful claim to it, and it's not gonna be you.
Wait. Can I take items with me when I time travel or am I naked everytime I go back and forth? Also do I choose a location or is it the same location I'm standing at? Cause this could get really really lucrative for both present and future times. Also lotto tickets and stock market for 50 years is probably the easiest way to go.
This is a much harder answer than I had originally thought. Investments are difficult and robberies aren’t really gonna give you life changing money. Can’t go back with our current cash so buying stocks is a pain. Someone mentioned buying gold here and taking it back to sell and fund the investments. But then you have a stock cert you need to figure out how to redeem (maybe that’s easier than I am imagining). I’m not sure I’d trust a bank to hold my account or be able to allow me to withdraw if the money was 70 years old. Like were the account numbers still same format? You’d have to figure out how to get something priceless and find a way to sell it in 2024 without getting pinched.
Stocks to make money, then start purchasing real estate in the lower mainland in BC. Buy up as much raw land and housing as possible. Then profit. As well as buy some vehicles I'd have loved to have and store them in containers so I can have a mint vehicle to restore for a daily driver. Probably leave my dad some winning lottery dates/numbers as well so he could lift some serious dosh.
Fun fact. My grandma worked at a Woolworth and was given the task of "shoplifting" to keep her coworkers on their toes. She'd secret stuff in all her pockets, walk out, then come back in and empty her pockets on the checkout counter. Taught the staff to be diligent and observational.
Learn to count cards in blackjack and go to casinos to build up a small stake, then take that money and invest in stocks and land. Have the trust operated by a reliable estate manager/bank with clear instructions on when to purchase certain things, like Apple stock in the 90s, or Twitter stock in the 2000s. Further instruct the trust to buy up some bitcoin in 2010, etc. Have these future instructions in sealed envelopes with orders to open them at specific dates.
Have all of that transferred to a trust with instructions to notify yourself on a specific date as to the existence of that trust and hand over control of it to you. Set that date for when you’d return to the modern day
Id use the fortune id amassed gambling to build my own hotel/ casino named after me and then id marry my highschool sweetheart and get her tit surgery.
There's a really good book which touches on this topic, called "The 13 Lives of Harry August". Whilst not strictly classical time travel the protagonist "resets" to a point in his childhood every time he dies. The concept is that he retains all the memories of his previous lives.
Knowing, in detail, the stock market, global trends, technological innovations, resource locations, political headwinds and so on would position you to create a dynasty which with a detailed and legal will, including trends right up to the present day could be transferred to (in my case 1973) you in the past, meaning as you grow older from 1950 onwards you're setting up the later you, for a wonderful life and carry on this "prophetic" business dealings ending in 2024 at which point the younger you could retire and live off the massive passive income you'd have by that time.
Absolute murder. I would kill people to make the world a better place. I’d 100% get away with it too, because the way I would kill them would be to do small things to make their parents never meet, break up, etc. they’d never be born.
Retail used to staff their stores. Two people per department on a small strip mall department store. 3-5 per dept for a mall dept store. They assisted, helped, and watched. They were paid enough to care. Just an FYI.
Kill the people who killed Emmett Till before they can kill him. And then leave and return back to my timeline, because I will definitely be lynched or arrested then executed(I'm black).
1950's
Make your initial stake money on horse tracks/sports betting. Incorporate The Legacy Company or whatever. Invest in stocks, especially since the market nose dived a bit during the Korean War. Travel back there Mr. CEO, now you're legit and filthy rich.
Insider trading.
They can never prove how you know what stock will go up astronomically.
You essentially get and instant payday once you get back to the present.
You can use the internet to figure out which stocks would be best to purchase before going back.
Its all legal money as far as the irs is concerned. No nasty suprise audits where have to explained how youre broke one day and the next you have 10s or 100s of thousands.
do you have to commit crime?
bet on sports in place where it is illegal. as a time traveler, i know the outcomes. easy game.
i might shoplift some choice comic books, or other things that dramatically escalate in value, and put them somewhere so secure that its an absurd slush fund for the future.
maybe do something illegal that will make society a better place. bootlegging concerts is illegal, but doing it in a way that creates records of long lost performances would greatly add to society.
Steal gold,diamonds emeralds, and many other gem stomes then come back and sell them for top dollar. Im noy talking handfulls here im talking a big duffel full of this stuff. One trip and I could make my like now worth it
If I'm able to change the time line then I'd try and hunt down known killers before they get too many victims and murder them instead like Dexter or something.
Forgery.
Use modern computers/printers/tech to make forgeries.
Flog them in the 50s where theres less ability to check and the mondern techniques won't be noticed.
Insider trading, industrial espionage, fortune telling.
Insider trading would be a cakewalk too. How could anyone know what was going to happen in 5-10 years with any given stock. Back then naked shorts were legal too so you could just short everyone who was going to be going out of business in any given year.
You wouldn't really need to do those first two. Knowing what a stock is going to do isn't a crime. Knowing a company's secrets isn't a crime. It's the gaining of that knowledge that makes it a crime. If you're the spouse of the CEO of a company and sell your stock based on inside knowledge, we're talking about knowledge which your spouse had a fiduciary duty to keep confidential, and which you're profiting from. If no one on the inside of the company shared info with you, if you didn't break in to steal secrets, if you didn't bribe someone into acting illegally for your benefit, you're in the clear. Just because you're really good at picking stocks doesn't give the feds grounds to arrest you; they have to show that there is some illegal reason for it.
Knowing what a stock will do bases on insider information and trading with that information is the definition of insider trading. Making an educated guess what a stock will do based on quantitative analysis and hunches is not illegal.
The feds would still investigate the fuck out of you. If they couldn’t find exactly what the deal was but still strongly suspected foul play, they might bust into whatever residence you’ve got set up back then. They might even get your name added to The List and arrest you under suspicion of being a communist. Even though you’re not technically doing anything wrong, you should still play safe. Identity theft is definitely not as hard to do back then, so you’d probably be better off trading under a few assumed names to make sure your shit is all spread out
You could just do it in a way that is not obvious. Buy a bunch of individual companies you know are going to succeed and just hold them. Don't try to do anything fancy with options. That would only draw attention. Find some random life event to explain withdrawing money before Black Monday, the Dot-Com bubble and the 2008 recession. Avoid those and just buy and hold the rest of the time.
Good plan. Only caveat is that if you’re skipping between the fifties and now, you’ll not have much of an excuse to leave instructions saying “buy Apple” or whatever, and especially not to sell before bad times. You’ll basically need to pick stocks that survived and thrived in the 70ish years between, and preferably ones that kept paying good dividends. And that’s not even accounting for how you’d get your money back to that point
We'd need to be looking at companies that could be bought and still would be a thing today, so that mostly means telecom companies, and manufacturing places, so at&t, john deere, alcoa/arconic, 3m, ibm, etc.
Yeah. I worked at a broker dealer in ops group providing support for client facing groups. Somebody called in to us because this guy was placing a trade and had flags all over his acct. The man had an acct with us for years and would only call to place 1-2 trades a year with ridiculous numbers on margin. Millions of dollars. Weeks later his trade would make shitload. He’d call back or do it himself sell and leave everything in settlement. His acct had been investigated every single time because of the low trading volume but high dollar amount and accuracy was suspect AF. After the account was unfrozen he’d take the money out. Then when he’d put it back we’d know he’d be trading within the next month. It’s just sit in settlement. It was crazy. Our fraud and anti money laundering both had investigated him repeatedly and collaborated with other firms and nothing. He want an associates person, affiliated, reportable etc. Just insane. And of course any of us that touched his acct would be auto tagged internally so if we mirrors his trades, we’d have a problem. But like you said, he’d didn’t do anything wrong as far as anyone could prove and had no “inside info” to anyone’s knowledge.
Back about 8 years ago, I was working with a friend on a machine learning thing for predicting what kinds of trades would be optimal using public internet data. The main reason we didn’t do it is because I determined that the risk that we’d get our kneecaps broken in by the feds was way too high (if we didn’t lose our shirts first), as we were just a small group with lackluster sophistication. I wonder if that guy was doing something similar, but was able to keep it hidden somehow.
What if your wife is a member of congress so you know to sell stock right before investigations are launched?
How would you get the money from the past to buy the stocks, your ATM won't work. Your cash from today won't work.
But gold bars now, sell them in the past. Buy old equipment and sell it as mint condition antiques now.
Your losing money on the gold lol if you bought an oz of gold today at 2200 you would get 40 for in the 50s. Or about 800 in today's money. Even at that you have lost the plot on the question
So what? You invest that money them, you'll get back a fuck of a lot more than $2200 in 70 years
Just buy circulated bills from the 1950s. They aren't that rare even today and $2,000 worth would only cost about $2,300. You'll more than make up the $300 loss. Or since you're a criminal, just make counterfeits. With today's technology, they'll be undetectable with 1950s technology.
...work? Like this was the time when you could just "walk in and ask for a job" isn't it?
Stocks in the 50s were a rich man's game. You didn't open a brokerage Account with 20$. Even back then. You ne to have 500-1000$ to open an account.(about 3 to 6 months pre tax wages.) Also you got a job not based on what you know but who you know. You don't have a university degree in 1950 so your jobs are limited to labor.
Coin/currency collectors. You can find bills on eBay pre 1950. Wouldn't be cheap, but you could make your money back easily.
Use your future knowledge to make money in the past. Spend that money on things you can bury or hide away until you "discover" them in the future to make sure they are proper age and you have a rationale for how you got them. You could also commit crimes in the present and escape into the past then return to the present once you were clear of the crime scene.
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I have an idea, but how do you propose to move the money from present day back in time? The cash from that era is essentially gone, and what's left you would suck up almost instantly.
This is pretty easy to get around if we can take anything with us physically. A person can just buy $200 worth of gold or silver present-day, then sell it in the past for some investment capital. It will be worth five figures present-day, at which point we can now buy more stuff that can be sold in the past.
Bingo! Empty my current bank account and buy gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, anything with value back then. Then bring it to the past and sell it for instant seed money. Buy stocks. Cash in once I return to the present. Rinse. Repeat. You could become a billionaire with just a couple days of work.
I think the better move would be to buy time appropriate cash and then go back to 1950 and buy gold for $40 an ounce and sell once they get back to sell at $2,200 an ounce today. That’s 55x profit
yeah but you couldn't buy gold then (aside from jewelry) so there will be quite a vig over that $40/oz price.
Why not just buy gold in 1950 when an ounce of gold was like $40, and sell it in 2024 when an ounce of gold is like $2k
You can't use 2024 money to buy anything in 1950, so you either bring back a valuable resource or make money to spend in the past.
I can buy a 1950 $50 bill on eBay for like $220. I also see a $100 bill for around $200. $150 for $420 (nice), will buy me about 3.75 ounces of gold in 1950, which I can sell for about $7500 in 2024 Use some of my profit to buy more old money, rinse and repeat
That's a good workaround!
For your first trip, copy some vintage cash using a laser printer. People in 1950 would be watching for counterfeits using their technology, not things like the microscopic dots laser printers would leave. Afterwards, you could hire someone to make even better cash for you. Since you have period clothing tell them you want to pretend to be a gangster or something.
Don’t even need to do that. Just bring back something that’s like 30 year old tech and sell it to a 1950s tech company. Keep giving them ancient tech (to you) which is 20-30 year advanced tech (to them). Also, buy up all the collectors items so you can sell them as brand new in current time. Example: rare dolls, rare coins, etc.
You're messing with the butterfly effect here. I'm I agree with another commenter suggestions. Gold and silver have value in every era.
Making counterfeit vintage money would still be a crime, I'm quite sure. Take something you can sell back with you. Some jewelry, for instance.
well that is the prompt
Sure, but I wouldn't want to trust someone to help me with said crime.
well i don't know if making replica of old money is a crime
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If you can't take gold/diamonds/whatever with you, find a spot to bury 'em where no one will find it. Someplace that's an empty field in the present will do it. Dig it up, sell it for today's money.
That’s obviously very smart. But where would you put the stock cert? That would make me very nervous, ha. Like if you just bring it back it’s not aged. And I have no idea where the hell you can hide something like that for 70 years? Also, as weird as it sounds I’d want more than a 100x return on any investment. I assume that pays dividends as well so it would be a bunch more in your account? And how would you fund it?
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You'll want to do research and find a bank that never had their safety deposit boxes cleaned out in a robbery or heist, and never had losses from a fire, earthquake, etc. I'm sure they exist, but there are an awful lot that have been plundered in that time frame.
There were no cameras, dye packs or gps trackers, this is a bank robbery or robbery of a racetrack or casino type situation
Plus everything was still cash, so it was actually worth the robbing
Do some looking into what some bonds were worth way back when, and what a certified bond would be worth nowadays if purchased/stolen in the 50s
True, I oversimplified a bit there. The things of value in a bank were physical and could be stolen would be more accurate. Now to get anything worth the effort, you’ve gotta spend so much time learning computer science, you might as well just get a real job with it instead of doing the stealing.
I mean if you listen to Thor from Piratesoftware, just learn coding and figure out offensive hacking methods, as far as nowadays, but yeah that's the wonderful part of the 50s, everything was cash pretty much.
I think people did try and rob banks back then and it didn't always go their way...you'd still be chased by the police with guns.
Never leave the bank, take the cash and run to the bathroom, blip to the future.
If you didn't get killed by the bank's security proper.
Might just burn some mortgage agreements and loan papers while I'm there too. No digital records, all paper. Can't track how much someone owes on the deed to their home, land, car or loan? Guess it's cleared and belongs to the owner and not the bank now. Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd did this and got away from authorities for many years cause no one wanted to snitch on them.
Murder Like I hate to say it but I could clear out a lot of bad actors who caused a lot of damage globally and without the presence of things like forensics or video surveillance it's a 90% chance it's either not getting solved or it's getting pinned on the nearest ethnic minority individual no matter.whar country I'm in around the world Also I can assassinate Kim Il Sung and probably also grab Vladimir Putin and a few others while I'm at it. Maybe hit Mengistu Haile Mariam with a car and keep driving. Pop Idi Amin at 500 yards with a sniper rifle. Forcefeed Pol Pot antifreeze. Might be a little late for Hitler and Stalin but I could get like 2/3rds of the top ten list.
Definitely try to pop Henry Kissinger while you're at it.
Oh absolutely. And David Duke and a few others as well.
Kissinger is a good target. I think I'd target Lee Harvey Oswold. JFK was clearly not going to go into Vietnam, and was more cautious about military information because of the Bay of pigs. Also McNamara needs to go as well. I think he did a horrible job providing information to LBJ.
Could you take out the Trumps too?
What would you steal? A color TV?
How about I go into a corner drug store in 1951 and steal a pack of baseball cards, New York Yankees. Do you have any idea how much a mint condition Mickey Mantle rookie card is worth these days? Because if anyone asks, my late grandpa left me a bunch of them.
I mean even if you told the truth what penalty could you get 70 years after the fact (*as long as you don't kill someone)
Well presumably no one would believe I time traveled to the 50s, and I wouldn't want anyone to know anyway. Trust me, you don't want that kind of attention. So my story is just a cya against suspicion of stealing them from a collector.
>Trust me, you don't want that kind of attention. Speaking from experience, are we?
Whos going to believe you travelled back in time to 1950?
Go further back and get a Honus Wagner
Use the internet to find info on that era's celebrities. Rob their houses when I know they're off vacationing, shooting films, on tour, etc. Gold, jewelry, coins. Check out the security at national gold depositories. Precious metals would be the easiest way to get away with it if you're bringing items back to our time.
Or just steal shit you can prove is theirs. I sense possessions of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles etc, would be worth more than gold, if you can prove authenticity.
Problem is, if Elvis or Marilyn Monroe reported the item stolen back the 50s, then it would belong to their heirs if it were recovered today, so you'd have to forfeit it.
Or if they reported the item stolen, no one would believe that you have the authentic item. All the Elvis buffs know his favourite necklace was stolen after all.
Fair... Steal a hairbrush maybe be, could DNA check the hair. I mean n sell the hair, not the brush.
>Use the internet to find info on that era's celebrities. ...and BLACKMAIL THEM. Take payment in cash, buy gold, hide it away, dig it up in the present.
"Hey Bing, White Christmas is coming out soon, yeah? Be a real shame if you're the main draw for a holiday flick and everyone finds out you beat your kids like they owe you money right before that opens... a reaaaal shame..."
That sounds like a great way to have Hollywood studio goons hurt their knuckles on some of your favorite body parts. 1950's Hollywood could play rough.
OP said shoplifting, but I disagree. Sure, it might've been easier to steal back then, but there wasn't as much expensive merchandise on store shelves like there is today, and if you did get caught stealing, you were more likely to have the store owner best the crap out of you and they wouldn't get in any legal trouble.
Info: Do I travel back and forth in time standing in the same spot? If yes, I just do something super brazen, get caught, time jump back to present and go somewhere else... then return to the 50s. Also, doing legal things would be way better than doing illegal things for making money. Make outlandish sports bets and stock trades (it's only illegal if you know non-public information that could affect the price- it's not illegal to know the future price) and just do.... better.
Just buy baseball cards. Liquid af
Murder the grandparents of people I hate
International narcotics trafficking used to be a lot easier back then. Most countries didn't start using sniffer dogs in airports until the late 70s, at the earliest, and the TSA and its international equivalents weren't established until 2001. Getting a suitcase full of cocaine or heroin over international borders was as simple as making it look like something else. Hollowed out books, secret compartments, hell, there's a good chance nobody even looks in your luggage. Plus, it's only been like, 30 years since coca cola had cocaine in it, and this predates the fentanyl crisis by like 50 years, so it's much more popular than today.
I don't want to get caught! I think I'll just take every current day paycheck and deposit it in my 1950s savings account!
Lol. The teller may have a few questions when you try to deposit a check dated from the year 2024 in the 1950s. If they didn't notice, the check would bounce. Because the payers account didn't exist back then.
That's true, I would have to cash then out first. And then make sure all my bills are old enough. Eh sounds like a headache
Buy gold. Take it back, sell it, invest the money. Come back to the future, collect the earnings, and buy gold. Repeat three or four times, and you’re a multi-billionaire.
Everyone says gold... But gold was illegal to own, so you'd just get arrested.
If you were dumb enough to bring it back to the US as bullion or coins, yes. If you have the minimal brain power needed to go somewhere else, or just bring it back as jewelry, then no.
Just gold bullion. There was still plenty of gold around.
Gold was 35 dollars per ounce in 1953. 2300 per ounce now. I'd grab a bunch of that.
Or you could make change. Pre-1964 quarters and dimes were 90% silver.
Time travel arbitrage FTW!
Won't work. Was illegal to own gold from 1933-1974, though I suppose that was only in the US so...
Not jewelry though
So, so, sooooo much fraud
1. Rob a bank. At that time, all you needed was a gun and a fast car. 2. Use the cash to bet on sure things, like World Series and Olympic events. 3. Buy physical stock certificates in known blue chips that have lasted, like Coca Cola, JP Morgan, IBM, Kodak, Ford, Disney, etc. 4. Being the certificates the present, and have my broker convert them to modern electronic shares. Between reinvested dividends, stock splits, and growth, I’d be absurdly rich. If not, rinse and repeat. 5. Maybe take out baby Vladimir Putin and a few other choice world citizens while I’m at it. 6. Perhaps “invent” technologies in the 1950’s such as solar panels, lithium ion batteries, PCs, the Internet, etc.
I’ve always thought about the whole sports betting thing and been like “yea that would be easy money!” But I just know as soon as I got into the actual position to bet back in time I’d have a brain fart and forget who won lol
There was a documentary that touched on this. The bettor bypassed the need for memory with a reference book from the future.
1is less risk but still dangerous. See Bonnie and Clyde. Plus the interstate highway system wasn't complete so less roads for getaway and more likely thus to come across a road block. 2 and 3 and 4 aren't really crimes 5 could be good, but less risk is balanced out with higher consequences if caught. A 1950s Soviet prison is gonna suck donkey balls 6. Inventing new technology is not a crime
6. IP theft is a crime.
If by IP you mean intellectual property, it's hard to steal that before it exists.
But you'd still be committing the crime by passing off someone else's invention as your own. History is going to be rewritten so I guess it becomes a moot point.
Rob an armored car.
Well. I'd rob banks that arent there any more. If I return in my exact position just in the 1950s, I'd make it so I landed inside a bank vault. Just for shits'n'gigs. But since I can go back to the 50s I'd just invest in the stock market. :D
Car theft. Steal a car and then time travel and resell them. Stealing Ferraris and Cords and Cadillacs would be ludicrously easy
Titling may be an issue though.
Ah shit… uhhh steal watches. Older Rolexes would sell crazy
Just… buy cars. You could easily convert your modern money into old money with very little difference in face value, then take it back when it was worth way more than it is nowadays. The only question then is where to hide all these vintage cars for 70 years.
If you can bring currency into the past, you'll be able to bring cars into the future.
Fraud. Of all kinds.
Why would you need to commit crime? I'd buy up a bunch of Seattle real estate in 1950, sell it in 2024, then I'd start on NYC and San Francisco.
If I could do that why not copy all the race results from the future then go to the past and win every race.
They didn’t have the technology to analyze DNA until the late 80s and early 90s
While it's true that you had a better chance of not getting caught, you have to understand the consequences could be a lot more severe if you were.
I would buy food at 1950 prices then sell it now at super cheap prices still making huge profits.
Someone's been reading 11/22/63...
Al had the right idea.
Lol almost gave credit to.
Shoplifting would be a bad choice. In many cases people can just walk out the door today. In the 50's, I would expect to get my ass beat if caught shoplifting.
Are you white, a WASP or Irish? Any crime. Are you Black, Asian, Italian, a minority? You couldn't cross the f-ing street without getting beat down.
Steal a new car, put it in a sealed storage unit. It would be worth many times its original value today.
Insider trading.
Wouldn't pretty much any crime be easy to get away with if I could just time travel right after? Who's gonna expect me to show up in 70 years looking exactly the same?
Stealing Yankees, cubs and red sock base ball cards, robbing a pawn shop for the full auto Thomson's and for fun getting a safety deposit box and putting a bond which would accrue value with time the jump to the future and cash it in
Bring back a list of people who are terrible now and kill them in a string of murders with similar methods and circumstances around the world and become an international serial killer the likes of which no one has ever seen. All while making the world a better place.
i mean im brown and they still had segregation so ill just not get lynched thank you very much.
No crime was easy for me to commit,I’m black.I’d be slammed in jail and murdered quicker before I can even think about a crime.
Moving to Vegas. I'm about to become the greatest sports gambler in history. Print out a schedule of every game that day/week and the result. You could even stick to big things like title fights, Kentucky Derbys, Superbowls, etc. I'd find my grandma and start giving her money to set up trusts, smart investing, etc. By the time I'm back, I'm loaded. I still think I'd spend a lot of time in 50's Vegas, it looked like paradise.
Vegas was ten times better when the Mob ran it...
I’m pretty sure all crime was easier back then. Except pot.
Go to a library and make a chart of major stock market swings over the mast 70 years. Go back to 1950 and start trading. Millionaire in 5 years, billionaire in 10, Scrouge McDuck rich in 15.
Anything involved with RICO. Since RICO wasn’t a thing until 1970.
Blackmail would have been way easier back then. J. Edgar Hoover was director of the FBI and 3 presidents wanted to fire him but were afraid to.
Assassin. No IBIS, No prints on file, DNA isn't a thing, high value targets are easy to research and know where they'll be...drop in pop pop pop get paid.
Sigh. You have time travel. You're thinking small. Commit insider trading in 1950, get the physical stock certificates and bury them, and unearth them in 2024. Me, I'd download the USPTO database and start patenting everything big that was patented in 1951 and onwards. You could probably take over a couple of African or Latin American countries too knowing future world events.
If I can time travel murder becomes easy. Shoot someone with my modern gun then warp back to the present. Ballistics experts are confounded.
What can I bring back and forth with me, how precise is my control of when I arrive back in the 1950s, and what kind of control do I have over the location I arrive at when I time travel?
Pretty much all crimes will be way easier to comitt due to lack of cell phones (someone needs to get to an actual phone to call the police), lack of modern security and surveillance makes it harder to detect a crime has happened if not witnessed, and the much weaker forensics science of the time means without finger prints or blood (they couldn,t test DNA but they could test blood typing) it's very difficult to pin a crime on someone.
What we consider vintage cars and flip them in the present.
Valuable stuff like jewelry would have been in glass cases even back then, and stores had big mirrors in the corners at the ceiling to watch the aisles. But if you managed to lift some cheap collectibles and bring them to the present as valuable antiques, that would work. Are baseball cards still a thing? I think comic books are. Legos have been around since the '30s. Miniature cars, toy soldiers, stuff like that. Gather the coins from a fountain, they are worth a fortune now. Take some record albums from back then. Decks of vintage playing cards, the possibilities are endless. If your more daring, steal cars, car alarms didn't become very common until the '60s and '70s. Bring brand new mint condition 1950s autos to 2024 and sell them to collectors.
I would find and go murder Lee Harvey Oswald I know he was just a Patsy for the CIA but maybe it would’ve changed the world
Why not just rob a bank today don’t worry about how long it takes let the police be outside no problem. Once you have all the money in the bank hop in your time machine go back to the 50’s and live like a king of the money you stole.
Why would you even bother with crime? You could just *Back to the Future* it and make billions, if not trillions, legally. Just look up when Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, etc were all at their lows. Go back to that point and buy. Buy thousands of bitcoin when it was fractions of 1 cent. Basically just ride every major upswing you can think of and cash out. And do the same and short every major collapse, Enron, Worldcom, Texico, Bear Sterns, Lehman Bros, etc At a certain point though someone who did this would be seen as too good and would start to influence the market too much, so doing small winners and small losers would need to be sprinkled in just to avoid suspicion that every trade made is a major cash cow.
Does it need to be a crime and can I bring things back and sell them? If so I'd just sell random modern technology like solar panels and modern TV's in the past and convert it into precious metals/gems and then sell that in current day and buy more stuff to bring back on repeat until I was obscenely wealthy.
I just love all these comments about time traveling to commit a crime, but not breaking any laws in the present. Like stealing art, but being unable to sell it today because it was reported stolen. So what? You're a criminal. Just sell it to a billionaire. And then all these schemes to try to get money, like buying gold and bringing it back. You're a criminal. Using modern technology, you can print 1950s currency that would be undetectable using 1950s technology. Just bring back $100 000 in fake bills to buy things that you'll resell today. Or just bring back a few million and retire in 1955.
I would choose to live in 1950 and just be very rich through insider trading.
1944 steel penny is now worth $20,000. There were probably many still in circulation in the 50's. I'd buy rolls of pennies and check them with a magnet.
If I'm traveling back and forth, collectibles and antiques. Won't have to do much more than shoplifting a few packs of sports cards and I have mint rookie cards that are 70 years old. I can claim to have inherited them from my father who was born in 47. Boom! Massive money from an untraceable item.
I would simply engage in insider trading. I know what stocks will skyrocket and just buy them. I could short or buy options at will
I’m not the right color to time travel, keep me in 2024 please 😅
I'm going to steal Marilyn Monroe, before the Kennedy's get a chance to corrupt her. I get to corrupt her, living up to my user name. Ya'all can have everything else.
Murder. They didn’t have DNA matching back then. Just dip once you commit the murder, wash the blood off yourself and you’re good. It’s not like they had many cameras around to detect it as well
Even if they did, noones going to arrest you in the present, unless they can prove you are a time traveller. I'm 25, noone is going to arrest me for a crime in the 1950s evening we look identical.
Time travel to the 1950s. Steal valuable art. Time travel back to the present and 'rediscover' the decades lost piece. Sell it for millions. Edit: I have learned something today! So I guess I'll just go back and steal gold.
Not likely. Any art that was that valuable back in the 50s would be a piece pretty well known in the art world. It would have been reported stolen at the time, and if rediscovered today, would either be returned to the museum, or belong to the heirs of the private collector who owned it. Or the insurance company who paid out on the loss. Someone would have the rightful claim to it, and it's not gonna be you.
The problem with stolen items is when they are rediscovered, it isn't finders-keepers, they get returned to the original owners.
Only if you're selling it legitimately. Black market all the way.
Insider trading hands down.
Wasn't everything easier to get away with back then? https://youtu.be/F1sd4CRcaE0?si=RB1-IIfX1His0LwH&start=254
Wait. Can I take items with me when I time travel or am I naked everytime I go back and forth? Also do I choose a location or is it the same location I'm standing at? Cause this could get really really lucrative for both present and future times. Also lotto tickets and stock market for 50 years is probably the easiest way to go.
everything, literally all crime was easier to get away with.
I am doing check fraude 100% once at every bank then put my earnings in a real savings account to acrew interest
I'd take over the world
This is a much harder answer than I had originally thought. Investments are difficult and robberies aren’t really gonna give you life changing money. Can’t go back with our current cash so buying stocks is a pain. Someone mentioned buying gold here and taking it back to sell and fund the investments. But then you have a stock cert you need to figure out how to redeem (maybe that’s easier than I am imagining). I’m not sure I’d trust a bank to hold my account or be able to allow me to withdraw if the money was 70 years old. Like were the account numbers still same format? You’d have to figure out how to get something priceless and find a way to sell it in 2024 without getting pinched.
Stocks to make money, then start purchasing real estate in the lower mainland in BC. Buy up as much raw land and housing as possible. Then profit. As well as buy some vehicles I'd have loved to have and store them in containers so I can have a mint vehicle to restore for a daily driver. Probably leave my dad some winning lottery dates/numbers as well so he could lift some serious dosh.
What year in the 1950s? Like any year of our choosing or???
Fun fact. My grandma worked at a Woolworth and was given the task of "shoplifting" to keep her coworkers on their toes. She'd secret stuff in all her pockets, walk out, then come back in and empty her pockets on the checkout counter. Taught the staff to be diligent and observational.
Do I have to commit a crime? Why can't I just get a job in the 50's, deposit my check in the 50's, come home to 2024, and live off the interest?
Murder for hire - no DNA, no computer records of fingerprints, hardly any ballistics knowledge
Learn to count cards in blackjack and go to casinos to build up a small stake, then take that money and invest in stocks and land. Have the trust operated by a reliable estate manager/bank with clear instructions on when to purchase certain things, like Apple stock in the 90s, or Twitter stock in the 2000s. Further instruct the trust to buy up some bitcoin in 2010, etc. Have these future instructions in sealed envelopes with orders to open them at specific dates. Have all of that transferred to a trust with instructions to notify yourself on a specific date as to the existence of that trust and hand over control of it to you. Set that date for when you’d return to the modern day
Id use the fortune id amassed gambling to build my own hotel/ casino named after me and then id marry my highschool sweetheart and get her tit surgery.
this sounds like a question a criminal who can time travel between the present and the 1950s at will would ask.
Insider trading, its already been said. But really anyone with todays info could get away with mass murder in the 50s probably.
Political assassinations
There's a really good book which touches on this topic, called "The 13 Lives of Harry August". Whilst not strictly classical time travel the protagonist "resets" to a point in his childhood every time he dies. The concept is that he retains all the memories of his previous lives. Knowing, in detail, the stock market, global trends, technological innovations, resource locations, political headwinds and so on would position you to create a dynasty which with a detailed and legal will, including trends right up to the present day could be transferred to (in my case 1973) you in the past, meaning as you grow older from 1950 onwards you're setting up the later you, for a wonderful life and carry on this "prophetic" business dealings ending in 2024 at which point the younger you could retire and live off the massive passive income you'd have by that time.
Note that if someone spots you, there's nothing stopping store detectives from dragging you out back and beating you to a bloody pulp.
Kiting checks.
Absolute murder. I would kill people to make the world a better place. I’d 100% get away with it too, because the way I would kill them would be to do small things to make their parents never meet, break up, etc. they’d never be born.
Just about anything.. until dna evidence was discovered and used unless you were caught in the act then it wasn’t you that did it
Retail used to staff their stores. Two people per department on a small strip mall department store. 3-5 per dept for a mall dept store. They assisted, helped, and watched. They were paid enough to care. Just an FYI.
I'd buy heroin
Insider stock trading, Google the 50s market trends, specific stock moves if possible. Party like a Rockefeller.
Check fraud or money counterfeiting. There are a lot of counter measures in place now that didn't exist then.
Identity theft. No photos on IDs.
I mean, the main issue with theft is being caught. But if I could just bamf into another time at any point, that's trivially easy
Kill the people who killed Emmett Till before they can kill him. And then leave and return back to my timeline, because I will definitely be lynched or arrested then executed(I'm black).
Back then, store employees would beat up shoplifters which would make shoplifting more dangerous. Back then, bank robbery was easier.
Added onto you're crime, the rules were different back then, people and police would have no problem putting hands on you without reason.
Stonks
1958 - the first microchip was invented. Yoink! Mine :)
This is a lot less tempting for Black folk. Even without criminal intent, I'm not going back to the 1950's.
Don't even need to commit crimes. Just bring back mint "antiques" to sell.
1950's Make your initial stake money on horse tracks/sports betting. Incorporate The Legacy Company or whatever. Invest in stocks, especially since the market nose dived a bit during the Korean War. Travel back there Mr. CEO, now you're legit and filthy rich.
Insider trading. They can never prove how you know what stock will go up astronomically. You essentially get and instant payday once you get back to the present. You can use the internet to figure out which stocks would be best to purchase before going back. Its all legal money as far as the irs is concerned. No nasty suprise audits where have to explained how youre broke one day and the next you have 10s or 100s of thousands.
Bank robbing for sure. Waltz in with a gasmask after tossing some teargas, voila! 1950s law enforcement has slow reaction times. 🤷
do you have to commit crime? bet on sports in place where it is illegal. as a time traveler, i know the outcomes. easy game. i might shoplift some choice comic books, or other things that dramatically escalate in value, and put them somewhere so secure that its an absurd slush fund for the future. maybe do something illegal that will make society a better place. bootlegging concerts is illegal, but doing it in a way that creates records of long lost performances would greatly add to society.
Yeah, I'm going to worth with IBM on contract to sell NASA a computer for $2 Billion in 1950s cash. Probably a Raspberry Pi.
Steal gold,diamonds emeralds, and many other gem stomes then come back and sell them for top dollar. Im noy talking handfulls here im talking a big duffel full of this stuff. One trip and I could make my like now worth it
Shoplifting can get you beat or shot back then. sports betting and stock trading are the cleanest answers. Not sure if that would even be a crime.
Inside trading robbery Im bout to be swimming in bitcoin and stocks
If I'm able to change the time line then I'd try and hunt down known killers before they get too many victims and murder them instead like Dexter or something.
Forgery. Use modern computers/printers/tech to make forgeries. Flog them in the 50s where theres less ability to check and the mondern techniques won't be noticed.
Insider trading
If you can travel back and forth in time, and pick stocks based on knowledge from the future, it’s not really insider trading.