By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor
The AP reports that Swiss actress Ursula Andress, most famous over here for her two James Bond films (the canon Dr. No and the very non-canon Casino Royale) publicly announced in January that she had been swindled out of some 20 million Euros (about 23 million USD) by her investment management firm, which took advantage of her advanced age and trusting nature.
The Italian police put their resources into the case, and by following multiple layers of financial movements, they eventually found the money, now primarily converted into northern Italian real estate and fine art.
Now 90, she reported that her financial advisor had been slowly embezzling from her throughout her 80s, and he had died in the meantime.
While it is unfortunate that the criminal won’t be able to pay for his crimes (here on earth, anyway), it is refreshing to see so large a crime result in a full recovery of the stolen goods. Much of the time, the money stolen has been frittered away and lost to the four winds, so we must compliment the Italian police on their successful work.
Here in the United States, of course, we have lots of crime as well. There are differences here, of course – her wealth and fame, and her huge stolen fortune, far outclass our typical robbery victim – a kid working the graveyard shift at a convenience store, a senior citizen who’s mugged in an alley, a homeowner who returns home to find his silverware and class ring stolen. The criminals and the stolen goods are as different as are the victims.
But there are similarities as well, and these are well worth noting.
In order to find the stolen funds, the Italian police had to expend a great deal of effort; multiple investigators tracking down multiple leads, going through real estate records, stock and bond filings, auction and estate sale records, all sorts of investigative drudgery. It’s hard work, but it’s harder yet to justify putting state employees to work on such research, especially when the criminal is already dead anyway.
The value of the stolen goods combined with the fame of the victim to make it justifiable to use police resources in this way. If only a few hundred dollars in cash and a watch were stolen, or even if thousands of dollars of silverplate and jewelry were stolen, could one of our overworked police departments possibly have gotten permission to work so hard on such a case?
Our police – especially in our big metros – are notoriously overworked, as they must spend their days chasing and catching criminals who have been chased and caught before, prosecuting and convicting perps who have been prosecuted and convicted before, only to be released back onto the streets for time served, or even, shamefully, no jail time at all.
We have so many crimes, not because we don’t catch the criminals, but because our system refuses to remove them from society when we can, so they are given unlimited chances to repeat their crimes.
And we don’t get the money back when we do catch them, partially because it’s usually already been spent, but also, largely, because the greater financial loss in such crimes is not from the goods themselves, but from the other damage that the crime does.
A small, personal example from my youth might help illustrate the problem:
When I was young, I used to keep an emergency wallet in my car’s glove compartment (I do so no longer), containing three or four gas station credit cards, my auto club card, and a ten dollar bill, just in case I ever had a breakdown or needed gas and didn’t have cash on me. Late one December evening at a shopping mall, I returned to the parking lot to find that some criminal had smashed in my car window and stolen that wallet.
What was the criminal’s bounty for committing this crime? What profit did he receive for his effort? He got a worthless vinyl wallet, a ten dollar bill, and three very low-limit credit cards that I had already cancelled by the time he tried to use them.
I reported the crime to the police, of course, but what could they do?
And what had I lost? I had to lose at least a half day of work, as I took the car to an auto glass shop to have the three or four hundred dollar repairs performed.
When you count my missed hours and the replacement window, this theft of a ten dollar bill, which would be reported in any “crime reporting” stats as just $10, in reality cost over $500 in terms of how much the victim had really lost.
But it really cost society even more than that, much more.
As a result of this robbery, I stopped shopping at that particular mall after dark. And I know that many others over the years stopped shopping at that mall after dark too, having suffered the same crime I did.
This doesn’t just cost the stores and the mall management some volume. It also costs the jobs of their employees, because as people stop shopping at a store, the store cuts back its hours. It has to.
There was a time when people could shop at big shopping malls late into the evening, 9 or even 10 pm, then go to the nearby restaurants and bars to hang out with friends. As the stores have switched back their closing times to 8pm or even 7pm or 6pm, their evening cashiers have seen their shifts cut back or eliminated, and the restaurant crews and bartending crews at nearby pizzerias and watering holes all cut back as well.
Crime doesn’t just create nerves, or a need for brighter lights or security systems. It does all that, but there’s so much more.
Crime causes shopping areas to constrict, and eventually to fail. Crime costs jobs, as the employees of those shops and food services and bars lose hours. Crime costs the city its sales tax and property tax revenues, and costs the state and federal government their income tax and payroll tax revenues too, because crime means there will be fewer workers, working fewer hours, earning lower commissions, and having much less to spend themselves.
Even at the Ursula Andress level, where our look at crime began, this epidemic of rampant robbery has a huge, and perhaps proportional, impact.
Every time there’s a story like this, whether it’s outright theft like in Ms. Andress’ case or a Ponzi scheme like the Bernie Madoff scandal, a whole subset of the economy – the people who have money to open big investment accounts – starts to second-guess themselves. They realize that if famous people like these can be robbed by a corrupt financial advisor, perhaps they don’t dare risk it themselves.
So there are more people who leave their money in a bank account for safety, forgoing the potential earnings of wise investments, out of a very real fear that some of those investors are crooked.
This too has a real-world impact, because when people don’t put their retirement savings, their tens of thousands or their hundred thousand dollars into the market, that money isn’t there for the lenders to loan to entrepreneurs and small businesses who need those loans for expansion, or the big publicly traded businesses to grow even bigger.
In the end, all theft has this same broad effect. It introduces fear into the behavior of shoppers, residents, homeowners, businesses and employees. It discourages the kind of commerce that creates new jobs, advancement, and tax revenue. It takes away options, as it drives some businesses to close now, some to close their doors soon, and more potential businesses to never start up in the first place.
As a Chicagoan myself, I have watched ever more stretches of our city and suburbs change over my lifetime – from nice new stores selling quality merchandise, to thrift stores and dollar stores – from blocks of busy shops to blocks of empty storefronts – from strip malls open late into the evening, to malls that shut off the lights early in the evening, because all their tenants now shut their doors at dusk.
We will be told that there are numerous reasons for these changes, that it’s really not all because of crime. And that’s partially true; it’s also, in part, a lack of potential customers with money, because they don’t have the jobs, the savings, the security to buy something big on time, or they don’t have the cash in hand to buy something small as an impulse purchase.
Our American metropolises lose manufacturers because of crime. They lose customers because of crime. They lose hospitality businesses because of crime.
People move out to the suburbs in search of safer neighborhoods, so the cities are losing property tax paying residents and school children because of crime.
You would think the cities would have learned by now – learned that when they catch a criminal, they should lock him up for a long time so he can’t do it again. Should have learned that whether they report the crimes or not, each crime results in good people staying away. Should have learned that getting known as a soft-on-crime neighborhood just draws more criminals to the area, until eventually everyone in sight seems to be a criminal.
But, no such luck. They learn nothing.
These cities deny that there’s a problem; they assign their mayors a 150-man security detail (cf. Mayor Brandon Johnson, Chicago), while claiming that crime is down and it really isn’t dangerous anymore, so why is everyone so scared?
And then to top it all off, they declare their cities – or their counties, or their states – an illegal “sanctuary” from federal immigration law, in order to attract even more criminals, from all over the world, as if their home-grown supply of criminals wasn’t quite enough.
Every crime hurts – usually much more than the dry statistics would indicate. And a wise government would recognize this, and crack down harder than ever, instead of living in denial, and gaslighting an understandably nervous public.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
