All that cheap credit led too many rich folk to overextend themselves.

Now the credit is being crunched. Payments get missed. Banks need to repossess the big-ticket items: jets, helicopters, boats. That’s when they call Nick Popovich.

For the past three decades, Popovich has been one of a secret tribe of big game hunters who specialize in stealing jets from the jungle hideouts of corrupt landowners in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil and swiping go-fast boats from Wall Street titans in Miami and East Hampton. Super repos have been known to hire swat teams, hijack supertankers and fly off with eastern bloc military helicopters. For a cut of the overall value, they’ll repossess anything.

Slate: The Lear Jet Repo Man.