Not Even a $10 Million Reward Can Get Anyone to Come Forward About Cartel Leader's Whereabouts: Absent the AP system, why should they?

[jim bell]

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/cartel-dea-10-Million-Reward-Effect-Drug-Leader-Mencho-565541571.html
"A reward of up to $10 million for information that results in the arrest of the leader of Mexico's most violent and largest drug cartel has so far gone unclaimed, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Los Angeles Division.Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantes of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion was indicted on federal drug trafficking charges in 2014 and again in 2017, said Nicole Nishida of the DEA.
"This is the largest reward ever approved for the Narcotics Rewards Program," Nishida said.
Oseguera-Cervantes, also known as "El Mencho," in his mid-50s, 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs about 150 pounds, and has black hair and brown eyes."

Jim Bell's comments follow:
Do they understand WHY nobody has stepped forward with this information?   Could it be that those with this information fear beging identified and killed if they identified themselves?  Ask yourself:  If you had this information, and were given two options:
1.   A reward of $10 million, with the strong likelihood that you would be identified, and later killed.     OR
2.  A reward of $1 million, but with perfect secrecy, so that nobody other than yourself would know who provided the information.
Which would you choose?  I think most people would choose the latter.  Most people don't want to quickly die,  
Nearly 25 years ago, I began writing the AP essay, https://cryptome.org/ap.htm.   I described a possible future where people are rewarded for "predicting" the date of death of hated people, primarily (initially) government employees.   I anticipated, and explained, that such a system would work much better if such predictors could make those predictions in such a way so as to be completely guaranteed anonymity.  Nobody, including the taxman, would be any wiser about such a payment.  Yet, all donors would be guaranteed that their donations would go to the actual predictor, and nobody else. 
If the US Government is inclined to offer $10 million for such information, wouldn't you think that they'd have anticipated the usefulness, and even the need, for such a system to allow people to provide such information in an anonymous fashion, guaranteed that they would never be identified, even to the US Government itself?   As we all imagine, such information would almost certainly leak, and the provider of that information will likely be killed.   If such a system were available, they'd be able to offer much smaller rewards, because the informants wouldn't have to trust the government to keep their identities secret.
Worse, consider what would happen if someone with that information contacted the US Government, and provided that information.  Would the USG actually pay the reward?   It might if the world was eventually going to find out that the USG welshed on its offer, but is that likely to happen?   How would the information-provider prove, to the public, that he was responsible for the information leaked?  And how would he prove that, without identifying himself, and thus essentially destroying the anonymity that he logically wanted to have?  Would the public ever learn what had actually happened?
The USG could simply refuse to pay, secure in the knowledge that nobody would find out, for sure, that the information was given by that specific person, and that the USG didn't pay what it promised.
In 2003, the USG began to promote a proposed system, "PAM", which was quickly dubbed by the clueless and biased news media as being "terrorism futures".   Google ' "pam" "prediction" "terrorism futures" '.    One result:  https://www.jstor.org/stable/30026644?seq=1 by Robin Hansen.   
When that proposal was made, I was in USP Atwater prison,  Apparently the fellow prisoners knew enough of my history to know about AP, and before I'd even become aware of PAM, some of they approached me, saying things like, 'It looks like the government is implementing your system, Bell!!'.   Not exactly, of course, but close enough so that many chuckles were heard.  
I was surprised, on many levels.  I was surprised that they would dare to implement a system that would actually WORK.  It would certainly do what they intended to accomplish, but it would also prove that my AP idea was convincing, and practical, and effective.   Why would they risk that?  Not surprisingly, however, the PAM idea died within about a day, being dubbed "terrorism futures".  How clueless the news media was! So, why would they even bother paying the informant?   If future potential informants didn't know that this specific informant got stiffed, wouldn't they proceed as expected, and provide more information?  Or, much more likely, they would see that nobody really knows if that informant actually was rewarded, and therefore conclude that without such proof, they shouldn't expect to see any money.
I concluded the latter.   That is precisely why I decided, when I wrote my AP essay, that there ought to be included a mechanism to ensure that everyone participating in that system, whether as mere 'donor', 'predictor', or merely a member of the public, is guaranteed that the system 'plays fair', and that anyone who participates gets whatever rewards he was offered.  He is guaranteed that if he makes a donation, it would certainly be paid to the person who correctly predicted the date of death of the target, and would not be paid if that prediction never arrived.
             Jim Bell



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