The loot-stash arrest setup (a community strategy, with caveats)

This is a documented community strategy, not our recommendation — it depends on deliberately dying, which is a real cost in a game scored on evacuations. But it's circulating, it demonstrably produced arrests across repeated attempts, and you should understand it whichever side of it you're on. Reported

The setup

1. 01

   Loot the relics early. Hourglass first, blinders second — the arrest toolkit (see rare item spawns).

2. 02

   Stash them in a far corner of the map. Somewhere Michael has no reason to patrol. On death you drop what you carry, highlighted for everyone — the stash keeps the toolkit off your corpse.

3. 03

   Die. Deliberately. This is the strategy's price tag and its ethical asterisk in one.

4. 04

   Return as Loomis or a cop. The CB-radio Loomis route is the guaranteed one (see coming back) — and only badges can detain.

5. 05

   Retrieve the stash and hunt the down. Hourglass pin, blind, meter, cuffs.

Why it works

The arrest system's pieces live on opposite sides of death: civilians can carry and stash items but can't detain; returns can detain but spawn with a fixed kit. The stash bridges the two — a badge with an hourglass is the single most dangerous thing Michael can face.

The caveats (all of them)

• It costs the team a living hero — escorts, slots, and evacuations — on a maybe. The RNG cop return makes the non-Loomis version a coin flip.
• Bushes eat items. Confirmed the hard way: items dropped into bushes can become unretrievable until the bush is destroyed. Stash on clear ground, indoors, memorably.
• Michael can hear this coming. A player beelining to a corner and dying cheaply telegraphs the play; the counter (break the CB radio before it's used) is already documented on his side. Reported
• A returning player is spottable — Michael reads human names over "NPC" heads. The stash retrieval walk is not a stealth mission; it's a race.