Money Making Ideas for Teleporters

[DiabolicGod]

Let's assume you somehow gained the ability to teleport yourself to places you know of. Kind of like apparating in Harry Potter, or the Jumper (movie) just without an order already alert and hunting for people like you, since you are unique and no other superpowers exist.
How do you use your newfound power to get rich and stop working?

My first thought was being a freelance express transportation service for small packages. It's a bad idea though (unless you do it with illegal stuff like drugs from the get go) as transportation nowadays isn't expensive enough to get a good amount per job, and it is easy to get tracked somehow (gps, investigation, etc.).

My second thought was to get around the risk of being caught if you use your teleportation to steal while still making a good amount of money.Here is a small list of problems you run into:

• Banks and authorities monitor your money closely, you cannot simply deposit 100k let alone a million without proving it is yours and how you got it.
• Without Banks, in a lot of countries you are restricted to how big of an amount you can pay in cash (~10.000$). Landlords may also be very suspicious and decline cash payments so still no moving to a mansion.
• If you steal something, like money from a bank, you run the risk of there being marked bills which may expose you anytime you use them. Other things like TVs also need a fence to sell to, since nowadays every purchase and sale is basically tracked.
• You always run the risk of being caught in the act or getting traced in some way when you steal, be it through DNA, body shape, knowledge restriction, etc.; You can try getting around this but it will cut into your efficiency.

In the end, it doesn't matter how you do it, your income will always be suspicious when investigated unless you find someone to launder it (Casino, Coupons, Game Currencies, ...) but even then you will have a chink in your armor.
I think I would try smashing an ATM open for the first couple dozen grands (past few years there have been plenty reports about gangs doing this), and then try to get gold and melt it down while making up some excuse on how I got it (family jewelry, found it somewhere, etc.) or just find a fence/buyer who doesn't do due diligence for stolen goods and launder the money through coupons and crypto as well as a consulting job I will take up (appearance through online website only, as long as I pay taxes even if it seems a bit sus it should be fine?).

I'm not into stealing but I think it isn't as bad if it is from someone ultra rich to whom the amount I would steal is utterly worthless, like getting 1 million from Musk's 200 billion. I am even less into having my ability exposed in this scenario though.

Do you have any ideas on how to make money if you can teleport? Or some other ideas on teleportation like this?

 

[Biigoh]

The bigger question is how much can you carry or transport with a teleport and how fast you can teleport.

 

[TheMidnightRook]

With enough range, a decent carrying capacity and a fast enough recharge time, you could charge a thousand dollars a kilo to transport stuff to the ISS for NASA and they'd be saving money by hiring you.

 

[Soupervan]

You could offer such services to hospitals delivering critical patients, medical supplies and organs for transplants. Not only would you be doing good deeds left and right but you'd be making bank at minimal risk.

I wouldn't though, since that would put you oncall for the rest of your miserable life but that'd be the more heroic thing to do while still getting paid.

Instead I'd offer my services to the 1% at fixed hours for rates that would make even the airline industry blush with envy.

 

[TheGrog]

Another possibility is transport to oil rigs. They aren't too far out at sea but are still expensive to supply.

How much you can carry affects what you can do a lot. Critical machinery or materials transport can be really goddamn expensive, and if you can move a few tons a lot of machine tools & equipment is within your reach. These things may cost hundreds of thousands to ship normally, much less instantly without worrying about available ships, trucks, and roads. As the weight limit goes up things like turbines & generators for natural gas plants come in reach.

If you top out around 200-300 lbs then transporting people is likely your best option. Allowing some .01% rich fuck to skip cross-continent flights would still be pretty valuable.

 

[DiabolicGod]

What kind of bothers me is that everyone here just leans hard into the transportation role, which is understandable given it is teleportation, but no one tries keeping teleportation a secret.
Like, come on, you may perhaps not get immediately sedated and put into a coma during sleep, but governments will 100% study you and you won't have the possibility of refusing.

I get that the whole scenario is quite hard to keep secret if you actually want to use your teleportation in day to day life, but with an50k investment, you could either travel the world and take pictures of utterly abandoned or very hard to see places that can serve as teleportation points, or you can also just set up / buy unmonitored places. Google Maps and Streetview should also not be underestimated, essentially giving you low-risk perfect coverage of most civilised places.

For the transportation job, you could make a deal with a cartel and take a vacation in the carribean or somewhere and just bring back a few chests, while officially taking a flight there and back. A one-time deal and you would already have a dozen million perhaps, and even laundered if your contact is nice. Still risky, but you are so much less likely to get found out as a teleporter.

 

[MewtwoBlue]

 

[Bear Ribs]

What kind of bothers me is that everyone here just leans hard into the transportation role, which is understandable given it is teleportation, but no one tries keeping teleportation a secret.
Like, come on, you may perhaps not get immediately sedated and put into a coma during sleep, but governments will 100% study you and you won't have the possibility of refusing.

I get that the whole scenario is quite hard to keep secret if you actually want to use your teleportation in day to day life, but with an50k investment, you could either travel the world and take pictures of utterly abandoned or very hard to see places that can serve as teleportation points, or you can also just set up / buy unmonitored places. Google Maps and Streetview should also not be underestimated, essentially giving you low-risk perfect coverage of most civilised places.

For the transportation job, you could make a deal with a cartel and take a vacation in the carribean or somewhere and just bring back a few chests, while officially taking a flight there and back. A one-time deal and you would already have a dozen million perhaps, and even laundered if your contact is nice. Still risky, but you are so much less likely to get found out as a teleporter.

Click to shrink...

I genuinely don't know how anybody could possibly keep their teleportation a secret, honestly.

Facial recognition cameras are everywhere, some nations more than others but still they're everywhere. Cameras are going to note that somehow you moved 500 miles in ten seconds. If you bring your phone or any other device, cell towers are going to pick up on that, and notice your phone traveled across the country in an eyeblink. There's no such thing as a remote hidden location, satellites map everything and if you throw up your isolated cabin somewhere, it's going to show up on a sat image. On top of that you'll need to own the land, be on record as living there, pay taxes, etc so the moment something hinky happens there, they already have a name and face attached to it. Maybe you used a fake name but that's going to show up to any determined investigation too.

If any spook happens to notice your isolated cabin, there's going to be questions about how come this cabin has no driveway or road access, or if you have one how come there's no car, or if you've planned even for that, why the car is making way too few trips to keep you supplied with essentials and how come the car is still at home when you're verifiably somewhere else.

There're some powers you might reasonably be able to keep secret but teleportation is not one of them, the only way that's going to work is if you never actually teleport, the surveillance society is too ubiquitous for it to work in the modern day. If it was 1980 or even 2000 it might be doable. And living under a fake ID and hiding, that only works if you're not interesting enough for an in-depth investigation and not doing anything to attract any attention.

A much better plan is to lawyer up beforehand and do your best to make a media circus of your abilities, go and win one of those "I'll give you a million dollars if you can demonstrate supernatural powers" contests, live in a gated secure community so you have a generally safe home base, attach yourself to somebody with serious wealth and power like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, and generally make sure you have enough power and money that disappearing you is too risky.

You know, like other rich people do to ensure they don't get disappeared.

 

[MewtwoBlue]

I genuinely don't know how anybody could possibly keep their teleportation a secret, honestly.

Facial recognition cameras are everywhere, some nations more than others but still they're everywhere. Cameras are going to note that somehow you moved 500 miles in ten seconds. If you bring your phone or any other device, cell towers are going to pick up on that, and notice your phone traveled across the country in an eyeblink. There's no such thing as a remote hidden location, satellites map everything and if you throw up your isolated cabin somewhere, it's going to show up on a sat image. On top of that you'll need to own the land, be on record as living there, pay taxes, etc so the moment something hinky happens there, they already have a name and face attached to it. Maybe you used a fake name but that's going to show up to any determined investigation too.

If any spook happens to notice your isolated cabin, there's going to be questions about how come this cabin has no driveway or road access, or if you have one how come there's no car, or if you've planned even for that, why the car is making way too few trips to keep you supplied with essentials and how come the car is still at home when you're verifiably somewhere else.

There're some powers you might reasonably be able to keep secret but teleportation is not one of them, the only way that's going to work is if you never actually teleport, the surveillance society is too ubiquitous for it to work in the modern day. If it was 1980 or even 2000 it might be doable. And living under a fake ID and hiding, that only works if you're not interesting enough for an in-depth investigation and not doing anything to attract any attention.

A much better plan is to lawyer up beforehand and do your best to make a media circus of your abilities, go and win one of those "I'll give you a million dollars if you can demonstrate supernatural powers" contests, live in a gated secure community so you have a generally safe home base, attach yourself to somebody with serious wealth and power like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, and generally make sure you have enough power and money that disappearing you is too risky.

You know, like other rich people do to ensure they don't get disappeared.

Click to shrink...

I guess it depends on how much surveillance you think the world governments are doing behind the scenes. Yeah, the technology is all there, Jason Bourne style, but I don't get the impression they use it for low-level civillians.

If you can teleport ANYWHERE, teleporting to outskirts and places without cameras is easy. I've been in places outside of first-world countries, and I think you overestimate how much surveillance can be done. Tbh, the biggest hurdles would be language and establishing a network of accomplices to help with whatever schemes you're doing.

I could see someone slipping up and teleporting around the same country with their phone, pinging from all sorts of implausible distances, but unless you are paying for international coverage teleporting around the world with your phone wouldn't be too much of a problem. Or just buy tons of phones for all your different bolt holes around the world.

I feel like anonymity would absolutely be the best defense for teleporters. If you can teleport out of any government lab, the only way they're containing you is keeping you unconscious all the time. Better for pesky government officials to never learn about you in the first place, or go on the run if they do.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I guess it depends on how much surveillance you think the world governments are doing behind the scenes. Yeah, the technology is all there, Jason Bourne style, but I don't get the impression they use it for low-level civilians.

Click to shrink...

It's not what I think, it's a matter of public record. We absolutely know they're using it for low-level civilians.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/how-facial-recognition-works/

If you can teleport ANYWHERE, teleporting to outskirts and places without cameras is easy. I've been in places outside of first-world countries, and I think you overestimate how much surveillance can be done. Tbh, the biggest hurdles would be language and establishing a network of accomplices to help with whatever schemes you're doing.

Click to shrink...

Okay, so you've teleported to some ultra-remote location outside of any first-world countries, presumably with no internet or cell phone access to preserve yourself from spying attempts. What are you doing there that's going to make you any money? Does this remote isolated village happen to somehow also be a major industrial, financial, or shipping hub such that teleporting goods to it is going to be profitable? Or are you going to have to now walk from this location to somewhere profitable, negating the benefits of teleporting in the first place?

 

[MewtwoBlue]

You have a point. But is smuggling and shipping really going to be the quickest way to get rich? I imagine normal robbery by teleporting into stores out of security-camera view would be the easiest way. Smuggling routes and shipping would be a much more long-term empire.

...Hmm, but then you'd need a place to fence all the stolen goods. Maybe you have a point.

And I didn't say no internet or cell phone access. I was just pointing out that you'd probably be using multiple cell phones in different locations, rather than a single cell phone pinging your location all across the globe.

 

[Bear Ribs]

You have a point. But is smuggling and shipping really going to be the quickest way to get rich? I imagine normal robbery by teleporting into stores out of security-camera view would be the easiest way. Smuggling routes and shipping would be a much more long-term empire.

...Hmm, but then you'd need a place to fence all the stolen goods. Maybe you have a point.

And I didn't say no internet or cell phone access. I was just pointing out that you'd probably be using multiple cell phones in different locations, rather than a single cell phone pinging your location all across the globe.

Click to shrink...

Well, I am a little curious as to what you're expecting to be able to steal from stores that would net any real profit.

Bear in mind a fence will give you maybe 10-15% of the retail value for something, so you're going to need to go for something big-ticket and that won't be easy. Virtually nobody with really expensive stuff relies on just locking the doors, they have extra layers a teleporter won't be able to bypass like armed security guards and motion sensors.

Having worked in the jewelry industry for years, f'rex, I can tell you no store with stuff better than rhinestones just leaves it in the cases, they take all the expensive pieces and lock them in a special safe overnight. Car lots lock up the keys and generally have night guards to watch for hot wires. Banks, payroll distributors, and the like use mostly electronic money, they keep relatively little actual cash on hand and what they do have is locked up in a safe at night to boot. Museums often put out imitation pieces and keep the real deal in a more secure storage, and usually have night watchmen to contend with too.

You can always easily steal low-value bulk goods like toilet paper or tires or whatever but that's not a path to ever getting rich*.

It may be worth hooking up with a cargo theft operation and going after Semi-trucks, a single trailer filled with even fairly low-budget goods will have a million dollars worth in it. However, now you're working with a crew and exposing yourself just as much as you would with a government.

*Exception: Toilet Paper right after the COVID scare started.

 

[AscendantMouse]

Heres a few options i dont think anyones considered.

1)How much bsing able to teleport could save you. For example a weekly bus ticket for first bus england costs £18.80 or 23.94 dollars for a student. Without having to go on busses weekly i would be able to save at minimum 20 bucks a week but dont stop me thete no no.

2)I'll asdume this works similarly to night crawlers, i.e i can know if i'd appear in a wall or something and the amount of space in that area. This alone would be rather usual for petty thefts from atms. Because if you can teleport other objects/quickly teleport JUST A PART of yourself you could occasionally swap a £10 note for a £100 note from one as it comes out the money slot. Id say once a week to be safe. Acting like its simply an error or some such. Never depositi g the money i to a bank but instead your own little stockpile.

3)people are dumb and easily tricked. If you have that awareness of space as i mentioned above you could steal money straight from wallets assuming soneone has cash. And if under suspicion you could simply teleport the evidence away.

4)a more fun one. Learn the location of like a gold mine or enersld mine ir summ and taje some unrefined material. It would sell for less and tou eisk crashing the market uf its over abused but its a viable option.

And last but not least 5)start a cult. It would be pitifully easy to.

 

[TheHoneyPot]

Okay so without being discovered...

Illegal activity:
- The biggest gain would be crossborder theft for personal gain of goods in transit on trains, trucks and cargovessals as the contents of the cargo in most cases arent observed with an interrior camera when in transit.

If you target solar pannels for example, you can get your house off grid pretty fast and save money. If you need building materials and things for your interior, you can gain it this way too.

The next question, is what do you still need when your house is the way you want it, and off the grid? Maybe you're even self sufficient if you went about stealing peoples saplings and stuff from orchards around the world and transplanted them.

- You could go to warzones, or sinking ships and go loot stuff there.

- you could smuggle people. Make them pay you cash, go under narcotics, put them somewhere safe for a few days, then have them wake up at their destination. None the wiser of how they got there because they were out.

-steal an airlock and space suit with sufficient air. Then go to mars, the moon etc and explore. Bring back rocks etc to sell. Make footage of it too that you upload from some third world backwater country. A year or two later so its hard to establish your identity and repost the footage uploaded from there in the form of a reaction videos and conspiracy theories when it starts to go viral, and cash in on those.


.......

Semi Legal activity. (Minus illegal entry perhaps)
- Making and selling Stock photography, sounds and video (until AI wipes it out too.

- selling second hand goods, or foreign food for cash on fleemarkets. Then using said cash to purchase local goods that you in turn sell on other fleemarkets. Cash has no trail. Its not on your account.

- exploring cave systems on youtube since you can always teleport back to the entrance and look like you just took rediculous risks. Ofc you do actually travel there to have a papertrail.

- exploring other hard to reach places, since you can just teleport back home to chill when you need it, and leave a small tent behind to make it seem like you camped out.

High risk of discovery. Illegal.
- clear the prisons by teleporting serious offenders up into the stratosphere or above an active vulcano or feed the fish in the middle of the atlantic.

- Theft from distribution and storage depots.

- Illegal tresspassing videos like those entering construction sites, climbing the the eifeltower etc.

- clearing dead satelites by teleporting too then with a stolen suit, then taking them to some third world country and nabbing non tracable components from them before nasa tracks the signal and the nearest quick reaction force in that part of the world shows up.

- cheat your way up the mt everest and other nearly as tall mountains as a secret solo climb, particularly ones that are restricted due to being on borders. Then make videos of being ontop and post your way to viral fame.

- troll people into thinking you made an attempt st reaching the northpoles pole by foot, faking most of the route, film intermittently, then call for a pickup using a sat phone either when there of when "you give up" because "youre lost". And go viral on the internet again.

- troll people again by making them think you tried to cross the pacific or atlantic with a canoe, same shit as before. Just teleport away if shit gets too dangerous. Post it online and go viral again. You could even make it funny by calling from international waters to for example the US to ask if you can be issued a tourist visa because you are almost half way there but forgot to arrange one. Then record the conversation along with your GPS and post it again. Including disappointment when they decline and seemingly turning back around lol.

- fake a world trip by bicycle and sleeping outdoors and stealth camping by teleporting much of it. Again post it etc. Everyone checking your papertrail thinks youre roughing it and keeping it cheapnby using muscle power, but in reality, youre just sleeping in your bed each night, enjoying creatuee comforts teleporting back in the morning.

- fake a trip to the center of the Sahara, film it, roleplay like you are a Fremmen and act like you are recklessly yolo'ing it. Fake you are doing it bear grills style and drinking your own piss to keep the liquids in when the water runs out, as well as for the views but in reality you teleported home and filled your bottle with lemonade.

- follow up your crazy adventures with dancing arouns the world videos. And sell rocks or other momentos from your supposed ventures that you collect on video, put in your bag and announce an auction off. Make NFTs of everything, combine it with stock footage gigs and play up the memes. For example quote Anakin Skywalker on sand as you walk through the Sahara desert, do the same for other popular memes.

- refuel your car or bike with gas you buy or steal in jerrycans wherever in the world it is cheapest. So you can travel around semi free.

- place a flag to your liking on every planet in the solar system you can teleport safely to when wearing a stolen space suit. Follow up with a monolith or other sort of shrine and place your dickpic at the center of it. And write the text "It was probe or be probed." Or something else absolutely rediculous. Upload an image of it along with the coordinates from some barely functioning country online. Then watch the world go nuts as some mars rover or whateved discovers its really there and A human of unknown origin was there, making the other locations seem likely too. Ride the hype with reaction videos.

 

[Apfelkuchen]

Hey maybe you can also go the government dog road….get drafted or join up in the military, work your way up and get trained and be the presidents get out of jail card…..or be trained to go on stealth missions where you bring a team in and out of enemy territory or maybe go the merc route for fat stacks of cash if you go and be a contractor exfiltraiton expert ….maybe you could be a Good Samaritan and help all over the world get vaccine and food to places that need it most …maybe for a small fee.
that was all I had swimming in my head for this discussion for now‍