Dead in the Water by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel - Book Review

Five Stars

Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel

This book is an eye opening look into high crime of all types carried out with unconscionable impunity by criminals who will never get enough. This true and frightening story is now an ongoing mega business. The book is worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS:

More than 11,000 oil tankers ply the sea-lanes, ranging from modest barges to so-called VLCCs, or very large crude carriers, as long as the Chrysler Building is tall. The tankers share the ocean with another 5,300 container ships, the greatest of which are even larger than the biggest tankers, with capacity for tens of thousands of standardized steel boxes. The large-scale adoption of the shipping container in the 1960s revolutionized the industry, drastically reducing the time and money required to move products across vast distances. Along with larger tankers, such ships catalyzed explosive growth: in 2019, the total volume of goods loaded onto ships worldwide, oil included, exceeded 11 billion metric tons, more than four times the figure in 1970.

Lawbreakers tended to share one overriding desire: to get their funds into safe, legitimate assets, preferably in Western countries with strong protections for private property.

The existence of a “scum market,” a community of experienced fraudsters who, for the right price, could cause a shipwreck or manufacture a fictitious insurance claim. Allegedly, the players in the scum market had underworld contacts powerful enough to have judges killed.

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