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A common concern with immortal fictional characters like vampires and the like is the frequency with which they'd have to change their identities and move around in order to avoid people noticing how they don't age. This would require the frequent forging of legal documents, driver's licenses, etc. This would also make banking extremely annoying, as they'd have to keep opening and closing accounts with businesses that are pretty dang strict about their standards for identification.

But a solution occurred to me: What if there were certain banks that were secretly run by immortals, and secretly maintained persistent bank accounts that their immortal clients could access regardless of which identity they're currently using?

Of course, the way I understand it, major banks have to do a lot of reporting to the government regarding their operations, so obviously running accounts like this is going to involve a lot of extremely illegal activity to obfuscate the true nature of these accounts and who owns them. But I don't know precisely what specific obstacles they'd run into, or what the best methods of concealing the nature of these accounts would be.

If a bank were to secretly keep accounts for immortals accessing the money between multiple fake identities over decades or even centuries, what would be the easiest way to do this while concealing the accounts' true natures from the government?

Cyrus Drake
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    Related, also this. – Escaped dental patient. Feb 01 '21 at 03:36
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    might as well go with cryptocurrency its more secure than your underground dark bank ;D – user6760 Feb 01 '21 at 04:11
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    @user6760 - Immortals aren't going to go with cryptocurrencies - they have to look to the future, and they can see that the per-transaction power consumption means that there's no future there. Neither for the currency nor the planet. – jdunlop Feb 01 '21 at 05:20
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    @jdunlop: haha you're right to make it worst now every effort only yields half the rewards unless someone makes an efficient fusion reactor I'll keep hoarding graphic cards and stealing batteries from ambulances ;D – user6760 Feb 01 '21 at 05:36
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    @jdunlop Or they're just so old fashioned they don't want to invest in cryptocurrency. They may still keep as much of their funds as gold just in case. – user2352714 Feb 01 '21 at 06:36
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    Uhm, why not just have a legal trust? That's what big money families do now.

    Your immortal creates a trust, adds him/her self as a holder, then changes names every few decades and readds him/her self as the new trust holder.

     – stix Feb 01 '21 at 17:52
  • @jdunlop you assume immortals care about the future... maybe they long for the end? "Finally" -Marcus https://youtu.be/cP7WEGuVwig?t=49 Can you guarantee they didn't create CrytoCurrency for just that reason? – WernerCD Feb 02 '21 at 00:35
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    This post right here FBI – Sebastiaan van den Broek Feb 02 '21 at 10:50
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    "major banks have to do a lot of reporting to the government regarding their operations"..... Well, y'know, if your immortals have infiltrated the banks, then... – jez Feb 02 '21 at 18:17
  • @SebastiaanvandenBroek Federal Bureau of Immortals? – tox123 Feb 02 '21 at 18:41
  • Forge death > collect inheritance > stonks – SparK Feb 03 '21 at 06:16
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    Asking for a friend? – Cyphase Feb 03 '21 at 06:29
  • Perhaps an immortal accountant would do all of that work for them? – Griffin Feb 03 '21 at 10:25
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    There are so many Really Incompetent questions on WB, but this is great question. Kudos!!! – RonJohn Feb 03 '21 at 15:54
  • I am not sure why immortals would need accounts. For example, as a mortal I would not lend money to Donald Trump because I am afraid he would not repay before my death. But as an immortal, why not? He will pay up eventually. So why do immortals need to keep close track of their assets? Everything belongs to them. – emory Feb 03 '21 at 16:58
  • Doesn't Switzerland have laws that bank accounts are 100% confidential unless you're suspected of criminal activity? https://www.cnbc.com/id/26182063 – Mooing Duck Feb 03 '21 at 19:49
  • Not strictly immortal banking, but Jerome Bixby portrays this idea of immortals changing identities very well in his movie "A Man From Earth" https://vimeo.com/ondemand/manfromearth Excellent movie – DeveloperACE Feb 04 '21 at 02:23
  • Not helpful for the past, but cryptocurrency would make a fairly difficult to audit store of wealth going forward. Sell btc as needed and forward the money to their bank account. It wouldn't have to be the same bank each time. – GrandmasterB Feb 04 '21 at 21:57

13 Answers13

180

Maintain a Bank Account for Above-Board Immortals

American law already grants personhood to immortal, soulless entities bent on twisting the minds of innocents to their will and consuming everything in an unending, unslaking lust for power.

They're called corporations.

Noss 4 At You Inc. has a rotating C-suite with signing authority that all seem to do their business by night - but the corporate credit card and bank account are entirely above board and no one is even going to look at them twice.

The account has no reason to cease, and (forged) death certificates for the expired identities of its lone board member and employee won't affect the legality of the account.

jdunlop
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – L.Dutch Feb 01 '21 at 17:22
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    Hmmm. Lloyds Bank has been around since 1765. What better example of an immortal financial institution or corporation? Think Harry Potter and wizardry. The perfect nation, perfect track record of longevity and stability, perfect example of stable conservative traditional policies. It seems to me that the control and executive structures are determined completely internally. Exactly what changes would have to be made to theorize that Lloyds was not already such a corporation controlled by immortals? Is the answer right in front of our eyes, hidden by history? – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 01 '21 at 18:17
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    I believe the concept of the corporation was invented in Portugal, and that's what began the Age of Sail. It was an investment vehicle that allowed people to pool their resources for the long-payoff work of sailing to India for spices. So, I think the legal instruments would have been known in Europe since at least the 15th century. – Tom Feb 02 '21 at 01:46
  • Aren't long-lived corporations actually run by real vampires? – fraxinus Feb 02 '21 at 10:29
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    "Noss 4 At You Inc" pun of the week well played. Nitpick though: while I appreciate that you were joking? about the immortal soulless entity thing but the longevity of American corporations is terrible. There is a constant churn of creative destruction as new firms grow and older ones fade or burn. Maybe that's not a deal-breaker for a story like this if it's character-focused and we're just talking about a lampshade, but it is a thing. – Jared Smith Feb 02 '21 at 12:25
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    @Jared Smith: List of oldest companies. Very few of them are from the United States of America. – AlexP Feb 02 '21 at 14:13
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    This answer would benefit from noting that people actually do this in the real world. Wealthy people routinely use shell companies to conceal the true beneficial ownership of assets. In practice it is very difficult, even for governments, to track down who truly owns assets held by shell companies, so it would be trivial to conceal the fact that the beneficial owner has not changed for an unreasonably long time. – Nobody Feb 02 '21 at 15:55
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    @JaredSmith while companies that exist to engage in some sort of business face creative destruction, there is no reason that a shell company, which exists only to hold assets, should face such pressures. You can't be driven out of business if you aren't doing business in the first place. That said, a crafty immortal might change up their shell companies from time to time to avoid attracting attention by getting on any lists of very old companies. – Nobody Feb 02 '21 at 15:59
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    @AlexP America is not old enough to have the 'oldest companies'. They pre-date the founding of the United States of America. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 19:13
  • Can someone explain the joke behind "Noss 4 At You"? – SystemParadox Feb 03 '21 at 10:29
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    @SystemParadox = nosferatu, another word for vampire – Rup Feb 03 '21 at 11:34
  • The corporation doesn't even have to provide death certificates when it changes officers. It just has to notify the bank (with appropriate real and/or forged documentation) to remove Vlad Dracul from the account and add Carmilla Karnstein, here's the right forms with all the proper signatures &c.... – Codes with Hammer Feb 05 '21 at 18:43
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South Dakota and Delaware (and probably some other states) allow you to set up perpetual trusts. The money in the trust is either doled out to the named beneficiaries or spent for the their benefit according the rules of the trust. Current beneficiaries can name their successor beneficiaries so you can pass the money down through a chain of identities. A US trust pays a higher tax rate on its earnings than the individual would (40%) and has to file tax reports but assuming the person has an address and tax payer id number that shouldn't be a problem. And the financial company running the trust wasn't curious, about the "family resemblance" between different people, it should work pretty well. It would probably work even better financially if the trust resided outside of the US although the person receiving the money, if a US citizen or resident would have to report it and pay taxes on it. You could read up on off-shore trusts to find out more.

Liz
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    This is still subject to being revised, altered, or rescinded by the whims of whatever government regulators are in power. It is not immortal. It can be changed at the whims of the political winds of the time. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 01 '21 at 17:03
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    @JustinThymetheSecond, those same concerns apply to banks too though. Throughout history, banks have been destroyed or nationalized or bankrupted when the country they're in goes through political turmoil. Either way, you need someone actively managing the bank or trust who can react to such things. – Nate S. Feb 01 '21 at 18:44
  • I would expect an immortal being to have no real problems figuring out how to minimize taxes. Or just keeping gold under their mattress. – Mad Physicist Feb 01 '21 at 19:09
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    Actually, the big issue with perpetual trusts is taxation and inflation. Trusts are generally taxed on income at much higher rates and lower thresholds. So good places to leave money, not great for making your money work. So yes to off-shore accounts. – DWKraus Feb 01 '21 at 19:53
  • Yeah, this solution is what I've been doing, seems to be working fine! Didn't even need to find a "special" bank. – David M. Perlman Feb 02 '21 at 05:07
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Banks are only one industry that requires identification - they will need to be able to identify themselves in many areas of life. Therefore, the logical immortal will go a step deeper, and try to find a process by which a birth can be registered through the proper channels, without the inconvenience of an actual child - perhaps by working a brief spell in a registry office every 40 years or so. If they can do that, the bank is one of many potential obstacles that simply ceases to exist.

A bank run by immortals will run into the same problems as our immortal friend - at some point, the ownership needs to change, and changing the CEO of a bank is rather newsworthy. You would need a whole society of immortals so that the CEO role does actually change hands, and again, those background checks would be important for such a high profile role. Therefore, our lone traveler might favour using a standard banking service with a business account, which can be conveniently 'inherited by their child' with no fanfare. Ideally, they'd want their company to be bought out by another of their companies every century or so, so as not to provoke investigation into a company that's been trading for many centuries with no apparent purpose.

They might also look into a wealth management firm. These are fairly common, and specialise in handling unique circumstances. They would be happy to handle all the financial affairs of an individual who takes their privacy seriously, and would also be happy to take over his estate and handle a smooth transfer of assets to their child.

Greg Martin
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timbstoke
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    Can you name a single CEO of any bank in the Cayman Islands, and when the position changed? Really, are they not just names on a document, to the rest of the world? – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 01 '21 at 18:25
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    @JustinThymetheSecond, I can't, but it's a good bet that the CEOs of the major banks of the world can. – Mark Feb 01 '21 at 22:44
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    Great answer! You are clearly very good at this, writing like an experienced user already! – Alendyias Feb 02 '21 at 00:31
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    A small gang of immortals could make a regular business of this, infiltrating registry offices and sprinkling the books with not only false identities for their own use but ones to sell to less enterprising immortals, like the real-life trade in false passports and bank details. An identity, like a rare whisky, would take 18 years to be ready to use, but they can wait. I'd imagine it would command a high price, but an immortal who's mastered keeping finances going over centuries probably has lots of money! – A. B. Feb 02 '21 at 02:56
  • @Mark Like I said, they are only names on a document. Knowing the name is not the same as knowing the person. Names on documents can easily be changed over time, if there is no real mortal person behind the name. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 18:46
  • Those background checks will be handled by the bank. There's plenty of private financial institutions that don't have as much as a website, or a website that's nothing more than a calling card. No one but the IRS cares how privately owned companies deal with their private matters. – Therac Feb 03 '21 at 15:15
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People are usually concerned about the age of other people, not about the age of abstract entities.

Your immortals do not open a bank account on their name as physical persons, but open one (or more) under the name of an institution or association. That John Doe is 250 years old may rise some eyebrow even among the most inattentive people; that the association "Friends of Haggis & Whiskey" has the same age can look normal.

That the association is nothing more than a metal plaque on a door is something that require investigation to be found out, and considering how much effort does it cost for the police to find out and uncover these schema when used by criminal associations, it's very plausible that the same would hold for your immortals.

I don't think one can be an immortal without learning how to swim among the big sharks.

Mary
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L.Dutch
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  • I'm beginning to really appreciate how trusts can shuffle and shelter money. If they aren't TOTALLY fixated on US banks, foreign accounts as part of the mix give you some crazy options too. – DWKraus Feb 01 '21 at 06:03
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Phoenix the bank every few years, and trim history when you do.

Every decade the bank should declare insolvency or get into debt, and buy its own assets out into a new trading name. This is a common practice, it's technically illegal, but happens quite often. It's a good way to cheat on your tax bill too.

This actually happens in finance already, I once had a single credit card with a bank for 4 years, the bank behind it had 3 different legal names in that time. Same board of directors, same card, same account number, same assets, same ads, same website even, different corporate owner. (My suspicion is it moved from one tax haven to another).

Every time the bank is purchased by "new" owners, transfer the account information to a new computer system / new database. Each time you do this, the slight difference in database format will be result in data loss:

  • No need to convert transaction history older than 2 years - that will just slow the conversion.
  • The old system only allowed M and F for gender, the new one allows 20 choices? Better to just clear the field rather than pick incorrectly.
  • The new system has different name length restrictions to the old one. Better email all the members and ask them to confirm their name, title, etc in case the old records were incorrectly entered those years ago.
    • If they were, we should correct the record at import, rather than pollute the new system with the incorrect data - it was wrong all along.
    • This process should be automated using an online system - for efficiency. Lest some non-immortal teller gets suspicious by a total name change.
  • The old system stored date of birth as a string as DD/MM/YY, the new system uses the database's native date field, but because of ambiguity for those born in 1905 vs 2005, the system didn't guess.
  • This should allow customers to subtly transition to a new identity every few decades, but keep their same account number.

Also - Have a branch in America, but registered offshore.

So you can start your own bank overseas on a budget. For under 80,000 Euro, you can start your own bank in the EU. There is cheaper options available, I've heard as little as $5000USD in Central Africa, but can't find info online at short notice, and the perception of trust and regulation is important.

Your bank is an overseas bank operating a branch in USA. Think HSBC - "Hong Kong and Shanghai bank corp", but headquartered in London, but you can get an account in the USA.

All the records are held overseas, outside the easy access of the US government; From the USA's perspective it's an opaque routing number and account. They can get the data with a warrant, (the bank will comply if law enforcement get that interested in someone - that's a condition of their license to operate in the USA), but this helps limit big data outing the immortal by scanning bank records.

Ash
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  • I don't think this works. The bank might die, but the client accounts persist just under new management. The issue isn't affected. – Stilez Feb 01 '21 at 12:40
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    The offshore bank thing is a cool idea, given the plan is for this bank to be run by Leprechauns. – Cyrus Drake Feb 01 '21 at 12:45
  • This can still be changed, altered, or rescinded by a change in political policy over time. These institutions were created recently, they can have a limited 'best before' time limitation. They can not be guaranteed through immortality. They could all disappear depending on the results of a single election, at the stroke of an 'Executive Order'. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 01 '21 at 17:07
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    Well, if the immortals can have a very small country under their control, with notoriously loose laws about banking, they control the laws (and may be the only actual inhabitants). Grand Duchy of the Kerguelen Islands, anyone? Just get the French to have ceded/sold the islands. No civilian population, and only 150-300 inhabitants (mostly research/military) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerguelen_Islands – DWKraus Feb 01 '21 at 20:04
  • @DWKraus Actually, that is exactly how the Knights Templar were able to form the Western world's first banking system - they operated from within the church - an organization that did not recognize national boundaries or national laws, Unfortunately, they ran afoul of the Pope. Then they buried their wealth on Oak Island, so future immortals could dig it up. At the time, no nation 'owned' Oak Island. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 19:08
  • @Justin Thyme the Second Don't know about Oak island and the immortals - the rest I knew. I do love me a good conspiracy theory. I thought it was the reptoids who subverted the knights Templar and became the Illuminati, and the Pope was actually a lizard covering the whole thing up. Thanks for setting me straight. ;) Yours is at least based in historical origins. – DWKraus Feb 02 '21 at 19:21
  • @– DWKraus https://www.history.ca/shows/the-curse-of-oak-island/ The search for the Holly Grail, rumored to have been kept by the Knights Templar, or the Masons, or whatever. Buried on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia Canada long before America was settled by European explorers, and thus before North America had statehood of any sort. It was the remotest of pre-colonial pre-empire pre-imperialist lands. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 19:34
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While vampires have some of the same financial needs as immortal corporations, they’re a lot more like organized crime. They want to hide their dealings, and live in constant fear that they will have to flee with as much untraceable wealth as they can carry at any time. At the same time, they need pin money that won’t raise suspicion, and also some highly-liquid assets they can cash out in an emergency.

So you might look at some of the money-laundering and shadow-banking networks that criminals, and networks such as ISIS, use. This is especially true if there’s a cabal of rich Masquerading vampires who can make deals on the honor system, since if they can’t trust each other, it’s all over anyway. For example, selling real estate and antiquities at inflated prices is a common form of money-laundering, and bearer bonds are still legal in some places.

The suggestion that immortals would be anarcho-capitalists is silly. (For one thing, anarcho-capitalism is not very old and has less of a track record than the US dollar.) They want to earn interest on their investments and pay people in cash. I suppose an individual vampire could believe just about anything, or have grown up to believe that real money is gold and silver. But that’s a poor investment, easy to steal, and hard to move or hide. And, if they’re old enough to remember the Depression, they will also remember that financial panics were just as bad and happened just as often when the country was formally on the gold standard.

Davislor
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  • I'd been wondering what might be happening with the cash economy in the future, banks closing, cash machines not having cash or check deposit facilities anymore, increasing numbers of payment methods - all electronic.... It seems to be in progress in the UK local to me anyhow. These immortals might be alright for a while, but become totally divorced from the mainstream financial system. – Escaped dental patient. Feb 02 '21 at 17:28
  • Lloyds bank has been around since 1765 as a continuously functioning entity. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 19:17
  • It's not that silly. If a bitcoin dude became immortal, that's what he'd keep coming back to. Gold bug immortals would swear by gold, some would buy land, because of course they'd all have top notch intelligence and influence networks. How you gonna outscheme people who are hundreds of years older than you? Forget about the banking. People have been the same for thousands of years, and that's where they'd excel. Talk you out of anything. Read you like a book. Subtle. Patient. Adaptable. Wear your fashions. Use your money. Always coming out ahead, looks like luck though. Smart. – chiggsy Feb 02 '21 at 21:37
  • @chiggsy Like you say, it’s not silly that an anarcho-capitalist who became a vampire would still be an anarcho-capitalist. The claim that immortals would become anarcho-capitalists because they are immortal, and eschew currencies like the dollar and euro, is. – Davislor Feb 02 '21 at 23:06
  • Nope, and I'll tell you why. America went bankrupt about 1970, when Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold. 1970 is also when the USA domestic oil production peaked. Fortunately, the US was able to cut a deal with the Gulf States, who had just formed a cartel: We will defend you, as long as you price oil in dollars. America now comes the buyer of last resort, instead of a net exporter, but that's ok, because no matter how many trillion dollars get printed. the inflation is exported, low interest rates, low taxes, and consumerism. No saving! – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 00:30
  • Nixon also normalizes relations with China, now the largest holder of greenbacks in the world. Some people, Saddam, Kaddafi, Iran, North Korea, would prefer to sell oil in Euros, which became a better deal around 2000 or so. Too bad. Saddam made a mint selllng oil in euros to Europe. Gone. Kaddafi did the same. Gone. If Canada did the same? Gone. I'm sure you know this. I'm sure you also know that the Gwar oilfield production has peaked. OPEC is pumping oil as fast as they can. It's 2021. So a problem arises... – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 00:49
  • @chiggsy That’s far from a mainstream view of the economic history of the United States. People outside the narrow cohort that came of age in the 1970s would not espouse it, and there is no reason becoming immortal would make anyone convert to it. Even a really extreme Libertarian from America would blame FDR and the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, or sometimes I hear the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. – Davislor Feb 03 '21 at 00:57
  • America can fight anybody, but not everybody. OPEC can easily sell the remaining oil in any denomination. China huge dollar holdings are rapidly being devalued. The New Silk Road goes from China to Italy. Europe cannot compete with this. This has all happened in my lifetime. I am not immortal. My father grew up in a world where the Pound was the reserve. So, as a sensible fellow, how are you buying dollars and euros instead of the Yuan? – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 01:01
  • @chiggsy In this conversation, here and now, I’m going to pass on debating whether that theory of economics that deems all modern countries “bankrupt” because none of them peg their currency to a metal is wrong. That’s an off-topic political argument. I merely point out that basically nobody takes that idea seriously enough not to use banks or dollars. There is no reason an immortal would be more likely to share your views. – Davislor Feb 03 '21 at 01:05
  • @Davislor I understand that. However, it was Nixon who turned the dollar into a fiat currency, quite excellent timing actually, what with no gold and no oil in America. Pre Nixon you could still get a speck of gold for a dollar. Now of course, there are trillions of them. I'd say they were worthless, but again, that exactly how you get a visit from the 101st or the 82nd or whatever, an I am a loyal Canadian. – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 01:06
  • @chiggsy You’re giving reasons why your view of economics makes sense to you. Their views would not be the same as yours. – Davislor Feb 03 '21 at 01:32
  • @Davislor Who said anything about modern nations being bankrupt? Fractional reserve banking is the standard, we can't go back now, it'd be catastrophic deflation. However, I don't agree that the Wandering Jew, or Gilgamesh, or Vandervecken, the Flying Dutchman would not see to have a basket of assets. and, obviously, crypto, which has intrinsic value, as well as fiat paper, and some patents, shares, and whatnot. You are saying you'd just walk around with a big wad of cash! Dollars and Euros! Not even the Pound? Or are you planning on just flippin rock on the corner for a thousand years? – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 01:46
  • @chiggsy You said, “America went bankrupt about 1970, when Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold.” (You meant 1971.) Historically, your belief that it’s impossible to go back to the gold standard is incorrect, since the US went back on the gold standard in 1944 after going off it in 1933, and several times before. Even when it was officially on the gold standard, it and many other countries frequently devalued, which being on the gold standard does nothing to prevent. Again, this is irrelevant to immortality. – Davislor Feb 03 '21 at 01:56
  • @chiggsy Is there a reason immortals would be more likely than anyone else to believe that, whether it’s correct or incorrect? – Davislor Feb 03 '21 at 01:59
  • Come on buddy. There is a thing, I'm sure you've heard of it, called M3, the money supply. 1933 is the Depression, so you get deficit spending as part of the New Deal. 1946 America is about to give 12 billion dollars, to Europe, as part of Lend Lease, so they could rebuild, to maintain that wartime capacity. That's one year after WW2. Back on gold? No problem. But now? What tangible good can be moved fast enough to maintain the economy without total deflation? Nothing. Anything? – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 02:33
  • @chiggsy That would be an interesting debate to have. For the purposes of this question, what interests me is: is there a reason immortals would be more, or less, likely to believe that than anybody else? Would this affect the financial arrangements they make, in practical ways? You’re making arguments that your view of economic history is correct, but what matters here is what immortals would believe. – Davislor Feb 03 '21 at 03:14
  • @Davislor Yes, because presumably, even if they did not read, they'd have lived through one of the numerous bubbles, just like you and I have, again, I am not immortal. Recession in 80, 88, 94? dot com bubble, subprime crisis, which arguably is still here, the lost jobs were automated. Mexico defaulted. So did Argentina, and Chile. What happens? Everybody freaks out and goes to the bank to take out their money, except banks only carry like 1% of what they lend. So the govt runs the presses, always. Then they sell stuff from work. But always, the presses. It's how you escape the mob. – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 03:36
  • @Davislor Well again, we are bound by faith. All it takes to kick it off is a small group of people, who get nervous, and go to the bank. Of course they show up next day, and thats the day they are introduced to fractional banking. As for our immortals, the problem is not serious, as long as they possess or have access to foreign currency, which is not trivial for most people. A fistful of yen during any one of these crises would be worth the moon and stars, except a Japanese one, of course. – chiggsy Feb 03 '21 at 06:46
3

Human servitor

In most vampire settings, vampires are able to recruit humans to serve them. You could in this regard have a look to the role-playing game mascarade (which I found well thought on this aspect).

For bank human can be used as nominee. I can be a risk for a vampire to set up all his worth on one human being. And no smart vampire will ever do that, they may split it as much as they fit.

So in your case is even simpler the bank knows, who is who and the nominee don't get much real power on the money on the bank. The main issue I see is when you need to alter human nominee you would have to cover your trace and may have to pay taxes... Surprisingly human nominee have all a testament ready and no close relative.

Why a human would serve a Vampire:

  • Immortality, The vampire promises that if he serves well he will be rewarded by becoming a vampire to. (don't forget a vampire won't have to fulfill his promises, just that the human belief in it long enough).
  • Vampire blood is often describe as a powerful drug, with high addiction, and anti-aging effect that disappear when you stop having vampire blood regularly.
  • Mental manipulation, some vampires are described as able to influence "lesser mind".
  • Power, an immortal being can become really powerful and rich, and the human may not even know why he gets so much money for this job, he may not even want to know and will discards weak sign.
  • Not knowing it, manipulation is a powerful tool, imagine it in the hands of a century old mighty being.

I know this answer have some loophole, But I can't imagine vampires without humans Mignon.

RomainL.
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The word for a financial institution dedicated to an immortal entity is "religion".

Think about it...

You have a collection of followers, nationally or even internationally, all of whom pay regular offerings/tithes in the hope of long-term benefits from their Lord(s). The institution will last as long as it still has followers, without any requirement for the immortal being in question to actually manifest themselves - and indeed the lack of a readily-observable immortal being at the top of the organisation is expected.

For bonus points, masquerade as an obscure sect of an existing religion, with strange rules that ensure other members of the nominal religion can see you're different. The "inner secret" of who actually controls the organisation can be a deeper mystery, revealed when you're bitten (and hence controlled by the vampire who bites you and unable to tell anyone else).

There is no requirement (in most countries) for any oversight of where the money goes. And as with most organisations, most of the money goes back out into running the organisation, with only a very small amount taken by the people at the very top. Realistically a vampire isn't going to have much living costs, so their expenses only amount to a small overhead. A successful vampire knows all about blending in and staying undercover after all - and the unsuccessful ones don't survive. (Most being killed by their fellow vampires to avoid the secret being revealed, of course.)

This sounds extremely evil. It doesn't have to be, though. Churches don't just exist for the hierarchy at the top - they can also serve as a focus for good deeds by their members. And the reason the House of Lords in the UK contains Anglican bishops as members is to (theoretically at least) provide long-term moral guidance which might otherwise be lacking from a secular world. As an agnostic/atheist, I don't really subscribe to that hypothesis (look at what's happened with children's homes run by religious organisations, for example), but then our religions are run by short-lived humans. I certainly wouldn't discount vampires running their organisation on the "benevolent dictator" model, and actually being a force for good.

Of course vampires still need their quota of blood. Conveniently though, a religion tends to encourage priests to visit people who are ill or dying. Much vampire literature considers the moral issues with having to kill humans in order to stay alive, with a common theme that any surviving vampire has to be a sociopath otherwise they'd kill themselves instead of killing other people. An ethical vampire could limit their impact on humans by feeding on people who are already on the verge of death though, and "last rites" would be a very effective way to achieve that.

Graham
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An immortal would want an immortal bank in an immortal country with a centuries-long track record of immortality.

An immortal would want an immortal currency with a centuries-long track record of immortality.

An immortal would want a banking system run by politics that they could trust with a centuries-long track record of stability.

America and the greenback does not even come close to these requirements.

No immortal would ever trust an American bank or the American banking system. It just does not have a good track record.

I suggest a better bet for them would be to find some very small, unobtrusive country that they could completely take over, and totally control, and form their own banking system and regulations with that country. You know, like financiers currently do today with Panama or the Cayman Islands or Jamaica or some very good ideas here.....

Offshore tax havens used by individuals and corporations cost governments trillions of dollars annually. According to the estimates of some economists, individuals have stashed anywhere from about $8.7 > trillion to $36 trillion in various tax shelters around the world. But not all of the tax reduction tactics favored by the rich necessarily involve offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. There's a variety of other places the rich hide money in order to lower their tax burden each year and shelter some of their income, many of which are quite straightforward. Here are some examples provided by tax, personal finance and small business experts.

But never, never, never in a country that can not be completely controlled by immortals.

In fact, if they were truly immortal, then their best bet would be to set up an operation in a truly neutral, non-political, non-nation, non-regulated, non-controlled spot devoid of any governmental institutions without its own currency or monetary policy governance like a completely hidden, completely covered, base in Antarctica, beyond the reach of the regulatory laws or fiscal policies of any one nation.

Justin Thyme the Second
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  • An immortal would know that this ideal currency does not exist. More to the point, an immortal would need dollars/euro/pounds/etc. to pay taxes and purchase goods and services. – Davislor Feb 01 '21 at 18:23
  • @Davislor But that is just conversion from currency to currency for the 'real' world. An immortal society could easily establish their own immortal currency in their own 'country' for their own internal use and accounting. There is very little 'currency' actually in circulation as physical currency, most of it is virtual - a number on a spread sheet. Think Harry Potter. If this currency is backed by deposits of many currencies throughout the world, it would be viable. All that is needed is a trustworthy accounting system with trustworthy bookkeeping, beyond the reach of any court. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 01 '21 at 18:33
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    After all, it was the Knights Templar that first established an international banking system, to protect travelers from having to carry huge sums of money from place to place. But it was essentially just an accounting system, numbers on a spreadsheet. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38499883 – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 01 '21 at 18:35
  • While I suppose an immortal might be an anarcho-capitalist, there’s no reason they would have to be. And anarcho-capitalism is not very old. An immortal vampire would probably keep dollars in his bank account for the same reasons immortal corporations do. – Davislor Feb 01 '21 at 19:45
  • That said, there are shadow-banking networks in the real world that criminal organizations such as ISIS use. Immortals who want to hide their assets and be able to flee in a hurry might well want something like them. – Davislor Feb 01 '21 at 19:46
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    "completely hidden" Yet have a currency with a conversion rate? How are you going to be "completely hidden" yet trade openly? – WernerCD Feb 02 '21 at 00:46
  • @WernerCD That's about the size of it. This only works for transactions between the immortals themselves. That might be useful but doesn't answer the question of what to do when one of them needs to buy something from an outsider. The original question seems to imply that they do want to trade with America. If mortals don't know this country exists, an immortal can't very well produce a cheque drawn on the Bank of the South Pole and expect it to be honoured. If they do know, then sooner or later they'll want to know who these people are and where the money comes from. – A. B. Feb 02 '21 at 02:42
  • @A. B. Many of the earliest banks, including the first Western bank run by the Knights Templar with their books kept in non-nation churches beyond the reach of any state ('nations' did not become a 'thing' with 'national boundaries' in the Western world before the Peace of Westphalia) used their own internal 'currency' that was converted to a local currency at the point of withdrawal. There is no record of how the Knights Templar worked internally, they were that secret. They could just as easily have been immortals, and just faked their deaths. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38499883 – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 18:58
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Put each customers assets in a separate LLC. The LLC can legally hold assets like a person but its just a legal entity, and as such it would not raise any flags if it continued to exist for hundreds of years. If anyone asks, just say the LLC has been privately held by family X for several generations.

To spend the money the client has a company credit card. All expenses are charged to that card, and then the LLC pays them.

Any cars, real-estate, etc can be owned by the LLC and used by the client.

As for a drivers license, the last cop who pulled one of them over went mysteriously missing.

user4574
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Two strategies: What the really rich do, and get real fake identities

(1) What real wealth multi-generational families do?

The short answer is to google "Single Family Office".

Wealthy multi-generational families have a organisation dedicated to serving their personal and corporate needs - from PAs, security and travel, to property management, special projects, PR, charitable giving, investments etc. Or whatever they wnat.

They already plan with a very-long term perspective, just for real multiple generations. With offices in multiple countries, resouces squirreled away or perpetually "in transit" etc. This bit of the problem has a real-world solution in place.

The only challenge remains creating new legal identities every generation.

Seems to me that with planning it wouldn't be hard to double-up some birth registrations.

Take the mother-to-be to two doctors (perhaps in different countries). After a home birth register the birth twice. After that it is mostly paperwork. Keep the parallel papertrail going. There may be a few occassions when a body must be presented but likley can be managed in the same way. Criss-crossing jurisdictions would make it much easier too.

When a suitable age, the identity is adopted by the immortal.

Repeat every 40 years or so.

(2) Certain agencies routinely create false "legends" for people

Intelligence agencies, witness protection schemes, etc routinely create robust fake identifies for people using REAL government documents, accounts etc. So one needs a good relationship with some of these people

Would have to think through whether certain select people would KNOW about you and be aware of what you were doing, or whether the Chinese Walls in such organisations would mean they wouldn't realise there was a sequence of identifies with ever-later birth dates.

If you are actually invulnerable-immortal you could make oneself VERY useful to these people (the film "The Old Guard" is a lovely exposition of this). If you are merely unaging-immortal there are probably still ways of building such a relationship (wealth, knowledge and patience!).

The biometrics problem

An emerging problem would be the ever-increasing use of biometrics to establish identify leading to double-matches.

So far things like passport biometrics are primarily confirmatory - you present an ID with pre-established biometrics and it is confirmed that you are a match.

With some - police fingerprint databases say, as opposed to a simple fingerprint lock - the systme is used prospectively to identify the person without a reference identity to confirm.

I am not sure how certain these matches are, vs what size database. But over-time the chance of them popping up in a list of possible matches with two or more of your identieson them would seem to increase.

Of course we don't know how immortality works - finger prints wear out a bit over time. Perhaps immortal fingers will change enough over decades for this to be a problem. Perhaps their DNA is mutable as a consequence/cause of their immortality so it won't match so well (but are their genetic markers for immortality that someone could notice). etc

Duke Bouvier
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The oldest banks are about 500 years only, and they survived by miracles .

Most banks, in recent history, fail badly and need bailing out by the taxpayer every decade or two.

They are very, very poor places to store money, identity, or anything. Despite the marketing and grandiose buildings.

Immortals would be best off simply periodically liquidating assets into cash/gold and moving residence while keeping their wealth in gold, diamonds, art , sculptures, and the like, physically moving their wealth with them.

Believe me. I speak from experience.

Altern
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  • I have no idea why someone would down-vote this. You are absolutely correct. Banks fail. Even the biggest banks can fail. Nation-backed currencies can fail. Corporations can fail. Nations can fail. Gold, diamonds, and such go all over the place in price. It does beg the question be asked, 'What is wealth?' The long and the short of it comes down to 'The ability to buy more stuff'. If you can not buy anything with it, it is useless to immortals. So what stuff do immortals need to buy? – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 02 '21 at 19:27
  • @JustinThymeTheSecond Security. Anonymity. Seclusion. – Altern Feb 02 '21 at 20:34
  • There's a great quote by Larry Niven about humans who lived for hundreds of years: "He was old. He never took more time than was necessary, and he always took that time." ( I think ) Everything said in this answer is true. However, those calamities are usually local. Ordinary middle aged humans see crashes coming, and since these events are a function of humanity, after a century you'd always get out in time. Gold crashing? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 5 years ago your immortal swung down to Bolivia, where he'cals buying up worthless salty desert, under which is say, lithium. Might take 50 years, no problem. – chiggsy Feb 02 '21 at 20:35
  • The real problem is that of course he marries and raises kids and whatnot, right? So he teaches them asymmetrical warfare, or spends 70 years instilling an incredible medical tradition, or teaches them poker, you, know, for his kids and nephews etc. That's what he wants the money for. – chiggsy Feb 02 '21 at 20:41
  • @chiggsy It was so easy 600 or so years ago, when half of the planet was marginally inhabited, and the indigenous peoples would not have considered immortality an issue. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 03 '21 at 03:05
  • @JustinThymetheSecond Well, not that easy. Even a chimp who wanders out of his territory... well go check it on youtube, they get comprehensively stomped, and they make sure they take the nuts, just in case Bubbles might be an immortal chimp. 600 years ago those peoples you speak of killed strangers on sight. Even if it was YOUR TRIBE 50 years later, your accent would be all weird. Full grown man speaking with a grandpa's accent strolls out of the forest/desert/steppe/mountains? Sounds like a demon to me! – chiggsy Feb 05 '21 at 00:08
  • @chiggsy Au contraire. Wandering about was far more the norm. Silk road, nomads, lack of borders, etc. – Altern Feb 05 '21 at 06:19
  • @chiggsy Methinks you have been viewing too much Anglo-Saxon-centric adversarial violence. Neanderthals co-mingled with Denisovans and early modern Humans. The concept that humans were an absolutely violent species is just recent bafflegab to convince Americans their gratuitously violent way of life is normal human behavior. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 08 '21 at 00:41
  • @JustinThymeTheSecond Finally! A person with a sane view of the world. – Altern Feb 08 '21 at 07:28
  • Neanderthal bones were also found in campfires, and at the bottom of cliffs, tool marked and cracked open. They were around for 250k years. Always at modern human camps, not at sites predating the travellers. They were human enough to interbreed, so sure, co-mingling. Ambush and butcher the men. Cook em up. Women can maybe tag along, since ethnic cleansing is horny work, and without a tribe, they are not going to survive. Anyway, we are talking about banks here. 600 years, you said, @JustinThymetheSecond. How you can make the statement you made is baffling to me, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯ here we go.... – chiggsy Feb 08 '21 at 23:23
  • 600 years ago in Europe we had the Holy Roman and Austro Hungarian empires. Borders arose after the industrial revolution when someone figured out you can build millions of miles of fencing. Before then the irony is we had 2000 years of the same European Union the Brits seem to think is a modern phenomenon – Altern Feb 09 '21 at 00:11
  • You've left out the thousand years of antisemitism, ending in the Holocaust. That happened. Of course they saw it coming, but so did the rest of Europe and denied them safe passage, or took their money to set up say, a banking system. Also, the Crusades. Rome's massive slave culture, Greece too. The Sunni/Shiite and Protestant/Catholic wars of religion, exceptionally vicious. Mediterranean cultures. Not sure why you mentioned Anglo-Saxons, the stars of that era are the Normans, surely. – chiggsy Feb 09 '21 at 01:02
  • Ok I've come around to the OP's viewpoint. The solution here is not banks or gold, but trade. As a trader, you can be in and out of everywhere, you have the ablility to play the long game, and a trade fleet is better than gold, because you can make money with it, and better than land because you won't get tied down. Plus, there's always privateering. – chiggsy Feb 09 '21 at 01:52
  • @ Altern A sane view of a sane world dominated by an insane country and culture. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 16 '21 at 01:21
  • @ Altern Not sure, but you might be interested in researching the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, not quite 600 years ago, but close, if you have not already done so. It was the beginning of our contemporary concept of the nation-state, and of dividing the entire world up into something called 'countries' with defined borders. – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 16 '21 at 01:28
  • @JustinThymeTheSecond thanks for the tip! Will read. – Altern Feb 16 '21 at 02:54
  • @ Altern Here is a link to get you going https://www.britannica.com/event/Peace-of-Westphalia – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 16 '21 at 05:28
  • @JustinThymeTheSecond I ended up reading the Wikipedia article before your link. Looks like I need to dig more into the 30years war. A cursory understanding so far tells me that military activities during that war led to hard borders, but the Peace treaties of Westphalia crystallised those into a new social structure where society swapped religious affiliation for geographical affiliation as the primary social denomination in order to avoid continued war. Still, that's just my understanding so far. – Altern Feb 16 '21 at 07:54
  • The Thirty Years War was one of, if not the single, biggest war massacre in human history as a percent of population. But basically, before Westphalia, there were 'kingdoms' where regions were ruled by the most powerful despot, and sovereignty was determined by military might. If the head honcho of the kingdom beside you was more powerful than you, he was the defacto ruler, not you.

    And the power of the Church transcended all boundaries. It was recognized that God's Representative on Earth, or Divine Leadership, was the ultimate authority.

     – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 16 '21 at 15:15
  • Incidentally, with the rise of institutions like the UN, it is hypothesized that the Westphalian system is going to be revised again, into a concept of a single world order, except that it will be secular, not religious. The nations of the world will be beholden to some central moral and legal authority. https://orientalreview.org/2017/12/09/peace-treaty-westphalia-1648-consequences-international-relations/ – Justin Thyme the Second Feb 16 '21 at 15:22
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Endowments

Large university endowments are [some of] the best performers among invested private capital. Your secret vampires have been around for a while, and surely amassed a large fortune, so they "endowed" a/some university/ies, and in exchange get a "job" at the university or even managing investment of said money.