Pirates Hijack Supertanker

In the world of criminal enterprise some people think big and others think small.

Case in point…take 23 year old David Mlynick of Florida. This wanna be Tony Montana stole a can of TAG body spray from a grocery store. When pursued by the store manager, he “became belligerent” and pulled out a BB gun to defend himself. Shots were not fired and Mlynick was arrested for robbery.

Halfway around the world, Somali pirates have seized the oil tanker, Sirius Star, in the Indian Ocean. A highly motivated group of thugs has hijacked—a ship that is longer than three football fields and slightly shorter than the Empire State Building. The Sirius Star holds more than 2 million barrels of crude oil with a street value of $100 million dollars. That’s just the contents— empty the ship is worth $140-$150 million.   And then we have Mlynick and his $5 bottle of TAG, rotting away in the Broward County Jail.

Mlynick was taken down with a couple of squad cars and helicopter a few hours after his “daring” daylight heist. The seafaring pirates are now two or three days into their crime. It is believed that this is the largest ship ever taken and it was done in deep water, whereas most pirates attack closer to the coast. Smaller scale attacks have taken place off the coast of Somalia netting pirates a ransom in the range of $18 million to $30 million, this year.

Since it’s impossible to hijack something of this size and not attract attention, a number of parties are trying to bring this episode to a safe and relatively non-violent conclusion. The parties include NATO, the US Navy, the Saudi shipping firm that owns the tanker, and the five countries whose citizens were taken hostage.