This item appeared in today’s edition of the NWI Times.

If you don’t want to read the whole thing, here’s a summary: four people from Indianapolis were arrested for allegedly running a fraud ring in which involved adding themselves to other people’s financial accounts. Four others (two from Northwest Indiana) are also named in the case.

They are alleged to have taken around $200,000 over the course of three years. The first thing I thought when I saw that number was, “Isn’t that an awfully small amount?”

Assuming the facts are as stated in the article, and that all eight people are guilty (which has not been proven yet, I know—this is a purely educational discussion), let’s do the math:

$200,000 divided by eight people equals $25,000 for each person. That, divided by the three years, equals $8,333.33 each per year.

That’s not exactly a major haul, is it?

Think about it:

$8,333.33 divided by 52 weeks per year equals $160.26 per week. Divide that by the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, and these people would have had to work just over 22 hours per week at minimum wage to match their income from this fraud scheme.

In other words, they could have worked a drive-through window for less than 4½ hours a day (assuming a five-day week) and come out ahead, with the added advantage of not having to serve jail time for doing it.

I wonder how hard they worked to create and maintain this scheme. I’ll bet it involved a lot more sweat than handing sacks of burgers to people in cars would have, though.

Again, we have a justice system in this country, so these people could all be completely innocent. I just thought the math was kind of interesting.