America: Starting from collecting corpses, leveling up to godhood

Chapter 101 Technology Changes Crime

"You're a tough Asian guy—deal."

"I'll have the track cleaned up tomorrow night, and I'll take care of the tow trucks and the illegal medical services, but you'd better make sure those rich kids you mentioned actually show up!"

"Go ahead and get your money counting machine ready—and next time we meet, I hope you'll at least choose a decent restaurant with air conditioning, and not try to fob me off with garbage."

Chen Ming stood up, without touching the barbecue and beer on the table, and led Old Joe and Sophia straight out of the RV.

Sofia, in the passenger seat, didn't scream until they were back in the Ford food truck and a few miles out of the camp.

"Oh my God—I almost thought I was going to die in that stinky RV." She frantically pounded her chest.

"You actually planted explosives in the car! When did you put them there? Was my ass sitting on a bomb the whole time?"

Old Joe in the back seat also wiped away a cold sweat.

"Chen, that's too risky. What if that fat guy is fearless?"

"If he had the guts, he wouldn't have ended up collecting loan sharks in the desert."

Chen Ming, expressionless, gripped the steering wheel with one hand and casually tossed the "remote control" into Sofia's arms with the other.

Sofia was so startled she almost jumped up.

"Take it away, don't give it to me!"

"Open your eyes and see what that is."

Chen Ming rolled his eyes.

Sofia paused for a moment, then looked down for a closer look.

A black plastic casing with a cheap logo printed on it —

"Garage door remote?" Sofia was dumbfounded.

"Otherwise what? Do you think high explosives are like discounted flour sold in Walmart? Where would I get so much stock to carry around in my car every day?" Chen Ming sneered.

"It's just dealing with a few street thugs, no need for explosives."

Old Joe, sitting in the back seat, was dumbfounded.

"It's hard to believe—just a few months ago when we first met, you needed me to encourage you to even run someone over with your car, and now you can lie to people without batting an eye even with several guns in your face." Sofia muttered to herself as she stuffed the remote control into her pocket.

"If you had been born a hundred years earlier, Al Capone probably wouldn't have had a chance."

"Times have changed. It's no longer fashionable to wear a fedora and mow people down with a Thompson submachine gun on the street." Chen Ming turned on his turn signal.

"Now is the era of making money, and to make money, you have to rely on your brain and information gaps—Old Joe, I'll take you back to the shooting range first. Tomorrow morning, you go and keep an eye on the Iron Horse Gang cleaning the runway and building the rest area—don't let them cut corners. The rich kids have high standards."

"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on them with my shotgun and make sure they pick up every single stone." Old Joe breathed a sigh of relief in the back seat.

After dropping Old Joe off at the shooting range, Chen Ming and Sophia rushed back to their apartment in Koreatown to begin further preparations.

Chen Ming called Chad, but it rang for a long time before being answered. Chad's voice sounded utterly hopeless.

"Hey coach, if you're here to laugh at me for having my car keys and bank cards confiscated, then go ahead and laugh. I have to be careful what my mom says even when I order a pizza. Honestly, it's no different from being in a concentration camp—and I'm even half Jewish!"

"I'm not interested in your family dramas—but I need your help with something. If you do it right, I can teach you how to drive a car like it's flying."

"Really? What do you want me to do? You can even make me clean public toilets!" Chad perked up instantly.

"You don't need to clean the toilets—I need you to borrow your old man's news helicopter."

"ha?!"

"Are you crazy? Those are the lifeblood of my dad's TV station, with millions of dollars worth of high-definition infrared cameras hanging on them—"

If I get caught stealing it, I might really end up in a gas chamber!

"Then don't get caught. Besides, 'steal' sounds too harsh. These things will all be yours in a few decades. You're just taking a cut in advance," Chen Ming said calmly.

"I'm organizing an underground gambling match in the desert in a few days, and I need a God's-eye view broadcast to stimulate the betting odds—as long as you can get a helicopter over here, I'll allow you to sit in my co-pilot's seat during the match for a taste."

Suddenly, a heavy breathing sound came from the other end of the phone.

"—I know the security guards and drivers at the TV station's helipad; they owe me several thousand dollars," Chad said through gritted teeth.

"Give me the time and address, and I guarantee one of them will be circling over the desert!"

"Great, don't forget to bring a reliable photographer and narrator."

Chen Ming hung up the phone.

"The helicopter is all set up?"

Sofia was curled up on the sofa, furiously typing on her laptop.

In addition to being in charge of all the accounting for this competition, she was also responsible for the casino's betting revenue and channels. In return for joining, Chen Ming agreed to pay her a daily salary of four hundred dollars, plus a five percent share of the profits.

Never skimp on finance and key technical personnel in any business—otherwise, you'll be heading for bankruptcy without even realizing it.

"Of course—what about your end?" Chen Ming asked casually, watching Sophia's fingers fly across the keyboard.

"How will the funds flow through the external betting markets? It's impossible for rich kids to drive Ferraris with trunks full of cash to gamble in the desert, is it?"

"Small bets of a few thousand dollars should be settled in cash on the spot." Sophia didn't even look up, her eyes fixed on the screen.

"As for large betting amounts of hundreds of thousands or millions—that would have been a real problem in the past."

"If it were more than ten years ago, to run this kind of black market operation, you would first have to register a bunch of shell companies in Delaware or the Cayman Islands, and you would have to find a professional underground bank to process fake trade contracts between companies—the money laundering fees alone could eat up 20 percent of the profits, and once the FBI or the IRS were watching the money chain, we could easily be put in jail."

"That sounds like a high cost, so what about now?"

"Now? Now we all have to thank a genius who invented cryptocurrency more than a decade ago."

Sofia couldn't help but laugh.

"This thing is the best gift God has given to the world's illegal businesses. There is no bank supervision, no need for real-name registration, and it almost completely bypasses the damn traditional financial regulatory system. All you need to do is send the victims an address for a crypto wallet, and even a sum of money worth ten million US dollars can be transferred silently in seconds."

Chen Ming watched her skillful operation and nodded in deep agreement.

"No wonder Silicon Valley tech upstarts and Wall Street capitalists love hyping this up so much—it really does seem to work."

"So, technology will change crime." Sofia pressed Enter and closed her laptop.

"The betting platform is set up; now it's up to your journalist friends to bring in as many big fish as possible."

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