New service takes the crime out of being a bagman

By Larry Persily

Used to be, a bagman was the guy in the movie who picked up or delivered the takings from a robbery. They tried not to look shady, carrying a bag or briefcase full of stolen cash or jewelry. The idea was not to draw attention delivering the goods, while the robbers were making their getaway.

A skilled bagman might also find work delivering bribes, payoffs and gifts to government officials.

If you found a bagman, you would find a crime in that satchel.

But then the world of apps and technology and the never-ending quest for new delivery services collided — or maybe colluded is a better word — to bring us Cash in a Bag, delivered to your door.

Robinhood, the investment brokerage that wants everyone to get rich owning stocks, while making the company money too, has teamed up like a couple on a tandem bike with delivery app Gopuff to offer cash at your front door.

Forget about having to drive to an ATM. And walking to a bank, why bother. Just go to your phone and order cash delivered to your home or office in a sealed bag handed over by a courier.

Of course, there is a fee. In this case, it’s $6.99. But if you have $100,000 in your Robinhood accounts, the bag-of-cash fee is a bargain at $2.99. Makes sense, I suppose, anyone with $100,000 sitting around can afford to pay someone else to pretend to be an ATM.

The new service is rolling out in New York City, coming soon to other big cities, which I don’t really understand since young people in the nation’s urban centers pay for their lattes with credit cards or their phones, not cash. I’m suspicious why they would need bags of bills.

“Why not cash?” Robinhood Money vice president and general manager Deepak Rao told The Wall Street Journal last week. “Everything gets delivered to their house, from burritos to medicine.”

Why not, indeed. Think about all the bagmen who risked criminal charges over the years for delivering bags of cash to corrupt public officials. Now they can sit on their couch, pull out their phone, click on an encrypted account, and have some innocent delivery guy deliver the bribe. No fingerprints to worry about. 

There will be rules. No late-night cash deliveries; the service will end at 7 p.m., Gopuff said. What delivery driver would want to be carrying cash in a big city after dark.

The company also said the cash bags will be unmarked, so that the courier doesn’t know what’s inside. As if they wouldn’t be able to figure out it’s not Thai food, a quart of non-dairy cinnamon spice oat creamer or a 24-pack of diapers — all of which Gopuff delivers.

Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar, while working as a business consultant last year accepted a $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents in an apparent public corruption investigation. Robinhood and Gopuff could have made the handoff so much cleaner.

And think how much easier it would have been for the former longtime aide to New York City Mayor Eric Adams who stuffed cash into a potato chip bag before handing the “gift” to a reporter.

Or all the cash — several hundred thousand dollars — found stuffed in bags and other hiding places in the home of New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez in 2022. He lost his job and in January was sentenced to serve 11 years.

I wonder if Robinhood and Gopuff deliver to federal prisons.

• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, which first published this column.