My interest in financial crimes went a bit further than I thought.
After I arrived in the UK, I started developing an interest in financial crimes. When I say my interest in financial crimes, I am talking about my interest in knowledge to help me decide whether I should become a criminal or a lawful citizen to make money.
To be very honest, by default, I wasn’t a lawful person. So, I had to make a choice. I have seen lawful people causing tremendous damages to the world while gaining public respect. These damages include mass murdering done in the name of war, constitutional corruption, economic slavery and so on. It’s a topic for another day. It was why, back then, becoming lawful was a confusing concept for me. It surely wasn’t a choice between the good and the bad, but there was a certain battle between legal and illegal.
Coming to the UK opened up various opportunities for me. It led me to see success in several avenues. In 2008, I flew to the UK from Sri Lanka. I came to the UK for my higher studies. Even though academics was supposed to be my priority, I loved the smell of hard cold cash. I loved it more than what my lectures taught in warm classrooms in college.
It wasn’t exactly the cash I loved, but I loved the knowledge I was gaining in the process of earning money. My brain reacted well to the knowledge that came with money. At the same time, I realised that the UK truly is a land of opportunities. But on the other hand it’s also a heaven for criminals — to be precise, a haven for financial criminals.
I was 21 when I came to the UK. I knew little clarity about the term “criminal.”
To me, a criminal was someone who does bad stuff. Bearing this self-made definition of a criminal, the very first criminal I have seen was an immigration consultant. He was earning good money. He was smart. He was punctual enough to fool the system. The system was run by regulators — who, knowingly or unknowingly — referred to irrelevant data. His consultancy firm had no progressive information. However, I closely monitored him (he was making a lot of money compared to myself, and all the other hardworking people I knew in the UK).
His main clients were overseas students. Soon, My research on this consultant and his firm led me to research more about the UK education industry for overseas students. The result? A few years later, I became an education consultant for international students who want to come to the UK. I knew that I could make good money in this field, but I had to make a choice. Should I do it illegally? Or should I stay within the legal parameters?
Being an education consultant was an exciting job. My expertise included consulting international students who wanted to study in the UK — or, simply, migrant students. However I hardly saw students who wanted to educate themselves. Most of them — if not all — sought ways to settle in the UK (I was addressing the wrong market).
So I didn’t really find professional satisfaction doing what I was doing. I decided to take it slow until I improved my knowledge, so I could approach the right audience to convey my message.
Meanwhile, my love towards money grew at a steady pace, pushing me to explore opportunities to make more money and seeking knowledge about money.
With all the new information I was acquiring, I became a conceptual business designer. I started developing business concepts, which help me make more money. Two years after I started my education consultancy firm, I started a holding company. I became well aware of the fact that people don’t do much for money (most of us think otherwise). Instead, people work a lot to maintain social standards and serve their uncontrollable desires. When I became aware of this, I also understood that just seeking knowledge about money won’t help me to become rich.
So what actually helps me if I want to be rich? Studying about people and how they think.
When I started studying about people, my main focus involved finding productive ways to deploy pleasure hormones such as dopamine in humans, and monetise my findings. In simple terms, it’s all about how to make people happy for the real reasons. How can I bring people the real reasons, those that are going to help them improve their quality of life so I can make money?
So I did research on fields such as: pleasure and stress; hormones; money, economics; politics; greed; social status; power; health in the context of the game of wealth.
The next step involved finding a research sample to explore all these themes. It wasn't as hard as I initially thought. I chose criminals to be my lab rats. They were everywhere. It was easy to access them while I dealt with my other work. I studied different samples of criminals: businessmen/women; bankers; credit card fraudsters; organised financial criminals; regulators; accountants; solicitors; politicians; Forex traders; mortgage fraudsters; tax fraudsters; con artists; ordinary public. The list doesn’t end here.
This research about criminals subsequently drove me into researching the finding links between economics and epigenetics. What you are going to read in this series of articles is, what I witnessed in the UK financial crime atmosphere and what I learnt while exploring my research samples.
This journey involved experience in money culture, pain, shame, excitement, life threatening moments, and even getting arrested, but most importantly, this research journey taught me essentials that I would later on require, to be a pioneer in my field earning conscious money, and building a mindful life.
I’m not writing these articles to say that I chose to stay lawful. I rather let you decide that. I'm writing these articles to share my experience with you in the context of chasing money. I’m also going to tell you why you should stay away from certain things — shorter, easier ways to earn money — despite how exciting and rewarding they are going to be.
Before I write my next article, let me just tell you something important. Becoming a criminal has no swag. Criminals — to me — are, just a bunch of losers. In another article, I will tell you why. The last thing I want through these articles is unanticipatedly inspiring energetic people to become criminals (my articles will reveal how much money criminals make, how much they can make by fooling structural systems, and how inefficient regulators are in catching them.)
Money can charm people, but I do not want to see a hardworking, energetic, inspiring person turning into a lawless citizen. Believe me, if you decide to become a criminal for the reason that it brings you money — or, not getting caught by a set of regulators who may refer to irrelevant information and fail in the presence of criminal innovation — you are at the opposite end of wealth and a conscious life. The decision is yours!
See you soon, Hasitha Rodrigo