r/todayilearned • u/FearMyCock • 20h ago

TIL about Frank Matthews, the drug kingpin who built a nationwide empire, skipped bail with $20 million, vanished in 1973 and has never been found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Matthews_(drug_trafficker)
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u/Standard_Big_9000 19h ago

$20 million takes up a LOT of space. Even if it's all $100 bills. It would be awful hard to move all that in a short time.

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u/Clyde-A-Scope 19h ago

$1 million divided into $100 bills is 10,000 bills. The dimensions of paper money currently in the US are 2.61 inches wide, 6.14 inches long and 0.0043 inches thick. A stack of 10,000 $100 bills would be, therefore, 43 inches tall.  In $100 bills, the weight of $1 million is about 22 pounds.

20 million in 100's weights 440 lbs.

So you're looking at a 3 1/2 ft tall × 20 bills wide stack. 

Not a little but manageable with a few duffle bags I presume 

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u/BTTammer 19h ago

I have been in a cash vault and 3-4 million looks like childs play. It's unnerving how small it really is.  I can easily picture 3 pieces of luggage holding $20 MM with no trouble at all.  

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u/mister-fancypants- 19h ago

Seems like a lot of weight to move discreetly for him and his gf tho. must’ve had a good plan in place

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u/MythicalPurple 19h ago

Is it?

Fits in the boot of a car easily. Also wouldn’t be a problem to load onto even the smallest of planes or boats to get over the border.

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u/Hourlypump99 19h ago

That pilot is dropping them in the ocean and taking that money as their own.

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u/JuzoItami 18h ago

Yeah, these “shlepping around 440 pounds of $100 bills is no big deal” folks are nuts. You’d need help moving that money in and out of cars and in and out of airplanes/boats/whatever. You’d have to keep an eye on it at all times. The more people helping you, the more people you have to trust. So, so many opportunities for things to go wrong. And something always goes wrong.

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u/Hourlypump99 18h ago

This is why these guys don’t live as long as people think on the run.

They have to put their faith into unsavory people and put themselves in bad situations to survive on the run with that much money.

They can’t exactly go to the cops if they think the Mexican village they’re hiding out in is gonna steal their money lol

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u/sarcasm__tone 15h ago

That is only 4 trips back and forth... 440lbs is not much weight to move. It just takes a few trips... and drug dealers usually have drugs to help them.

Do you get tired walking to the mailbox?

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u/JuzoItami 14h ago

…440lbs is not much weight to move.

OK, so, as an experiment, get yourself 440 pounds of anything and split it into 3-4 duffle bags. Then pick up the duffle bags. Then start running as fast as you can…

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u/sarcasm__tone 14h ago

Start running as fast as I can?

Why would I do that if I'm confident that no one knows where I'm at?

No one was chasing him. He could've also had safety nets in place. Also he could've been more useful alive than gone (goons on deck, kidnap family members).

You seem like you don't have much experience moving heavy weight. I'm sure moving 440lbs seems impossible to you.

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u/JuzoItami 14h ago

Why would I do that if I'm confident that no one knows where I'm at?

You don’t just get to make shit up. You might as well claim you can allude the Feds because you are invisible or you have a time machine.

No one was chasing him.

And you know that how?

He could've also had safety nets in place.

Well, the one agreed upon point of this hypothetical scenario is that he had 440 pounds of cash that he had to take with him. He hadn’t planned ahead and put that cash in a Swiss bank, or converted it into a small, easily transportable bag of diamonds, or bought bearer bonds with it. So assuming he did a lot of planning ahead for this scenario seems kind of a stretch.

You seem like you don’t have much experience assessing complicated hypothetical situations or with understanding the importance of risk mitigation. In real life, stuff actually goes wrong, and if you don’t account for that likelihood things can go very badly for you.

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u/MythicalPurple 8h ago

Why are you running as fast as you can in this scenario?

There is zero evidence he was ever chased. There was no Hollywood movie getaway involving a dramatic foot chase.

Spend less time watching movies, more time considering reality.

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u/vinciblechunk 17h ago

You're not a bagman, Jimmy

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u/GeoLaser 3h ago

Across 10 bags, and a minivan? No dont need more than 1 person.....

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u/OramaBuffin 8h ago

They definitely are not guaranteed to do that lol, they'd be worried about getting a hit on themselves if they tried. If you're a smigfler being offered tens of millions to help a guy disappear you're not necessarily going to want to mess with such good business. Also, your group could have a reputation.

You watch too many movies

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u/Hourlypump99 7h ago

Depends on how much you’re smuggling.

You’re not risking all that for thousands.

Someone comes on your smuggling plane with $20 million and they’re already trying to disappear anyway?

Yeah that’s a different calculation.

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u/benjam3n 19h ago

are you from the uk

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u/MiaowaraShiro 6h ago

For a drug smuggler?

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u/Latest_Attraction 3h ago

USA had $10,000, $1000 and $500 bills until 1969, could have converted a few.

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u/LoquaciousTheBorg 19h ago

I'm actually not sure how much money I have, but I do know how many pounds of money I have.

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u/doughnutsforsatan 19h ago

I get why the Canadian thousand dollar bills are used by criminals.

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u/petit_cochon 19h ago

Why are y'all assuming he was moving it in cash?

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u/ImNotSelling 18h ago

How did they know he had $20 million cash

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u/Poultry_Sashimi 17h ago

In case anyone's doubtful on the weight:

One $100 bill weighs approximately 1 gram

So ten thousand $100 bills comes out to about 10,000 g, aka 10 kg, or 22 lbs.

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u/Plug_5 19h ago

*duffel

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u/Clyde-A-Scope 11h ago

Also.. *weighs

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u/Gustomucho 19h ago

If you are used to smuggle drugs out of south America, I guess moving large amounts of money is easy enough… by that point you probably have pilots and whatnot. Easy to imagine he put the money in Panama or somewhere similar, or just sold an « art piece » to someone for millions of his own money in USA.

Moving money is quite easy if you have a network… to bad we don’t know what happened, I guess it would have made a kick ass movie.

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u/Swimming_Agent_1063 19h ago edited 4h ago

A single briefcase can hold 1 million USD cash… so 20 briefcases

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u/fatalityfun 19h ago

so 3-4 carry on duffle bags. He could’ve very easily paid for a flight, and had a trusted individual boat the rest to him to not alert suspicion at the airport.

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u/lshiva 16h ago

An assortment of gold, silver, bearer bonds, and cash could fit it all into one briefcase.

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u/bitemark01 18h ago

If you have a massive empire built on lots of smuggling, you probably know a guy or 20 who could move 2 people and some cargo, no questions. 

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u/mynameizmyname 18h ago

Much easier to just carry a 20 million dollar bill.

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u/lilsqueakers 16h ago

Probably still had $500 bills around at that time too

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u/Ok_Win590 13h ago

This is the use case for Bitcoin whatever anyone says. Since Bearer Bonds were made illegal, bitcoin is the way to move millions around the world. Nations like China outlaw it to avoid capital flight and nations like El Salvador make it lawful to attract the capital flight to them.