GTA Online Finance & Felony Guide (including Special Cargo)

Published 20:00 Jun 29 2016 EDTUpdated 22:25 Nov 9 2025 EST

GTA Online Finance & Felony Guide (including Special Cargo) | GTA BOOM

This guide provides comprehensive tips and tricks on how to come out top in the content of one of GTA Online's major DLC releases, Further Adventures in Finance and Felony. This was the biggest and deepest update at the time of its release, not to mention the most divisive among the community — all this, in addition to providing effective new ways to earn GTA$.

There has always been animosity... well, actually, there has always been seething hatred and disgust between the griefer and non-griefers among the GTA Online playerbase, but never has it been as pronounced as during the heyday of this update, which forced players to transport destructible cargo of great value in public sessions with passive mode off.

We'll cover how to navigate those particularly risky missions, as well as all the other new content added to GTA Online with Further Adventures in Finance and Felony.

Who said crime doesn't pay?

Griefers vs Non-Griefers

Finance and Felony has players make investments of several million GTA $ in the form of crates that need to be taken to warehouses and later delivered to buyers. Thing is, these crates have the tendency to burn or blow up when shot repeatedly with high velocity projectiles.

You can imagine the moist squeeing this realization spawned from those handful of pre-pubescent players who love flying around in Hydras and repeatedly killing other players who are minding their own business. On the other hand, those GTA fans who wanted to immerse themselves in the new black market mechanic saw this as more than a nuisance.

Selling crates is a great source of income, but requires investment upfront.

While we've covered anti-griefer techniques in the past, put together a quick tutorial on how to get into your own empty public lobby whenever you want as well as a guide of our own regarding Finance and Felony, Rockstar's own guide has some pretty handy tips.

Since you unfortunately cannot do any black market missions in private lobbies — which, we admit, is a fault of the DLC — you can hop through lobbies until you encounter one with no asshole players around. Trust us, these are more frequent than most online forums would have you believe. Alternatively, have one of your associates hop into a Hydra of their own and grief the assholes right back.

Background

Further Adventures in Finance and Felony builds upon what was possibly the best received DLC since Heists. Executives and Other Criminals was added to GTA Online back in December 2015 and brought with it a new level of gameplay with the VIP and Bodyguard system.

Now introducing toxic employer-employee social dynamics!

While more than enough words have been written about being a great VIP and a reliable Bodyguard, it never hurts to re-iterate how influential that DLC was. After all, it is SecuroServe which provides CEOs with associates in this update too.

The Office

The crux of becoming the biggest shark in the pool (which in this case is Los Santos) is getting the right office. There are four offices on offer, each with a different price tag. Functionally, they are all identical — the players with the cheapest offices have the same chances at success as the ones with the most expensive offices.

Keep your illegal guns right next to your illegal cash.

With the pricier HQs, you really just paying for the location, size and bragging rights. In this sense, being a CEO in GTA Online is much like being a CEO in real life — tossing money out the window for some flashy luxuries is in direct relation to your social standing.

Each office also gives players access to the same optional bonuses — if you pay extra, of course. These include a gun locker, a safe and accommodations.

Apartments

The accommodations turn the office into a proper apartment, allowing characters to sleep and change outfits in the office, while the gun locker finally brings weapon loadout customization to GTA Online, allowing players to dump unused guns in order to make weapon selection quicker.

This is absolutely not safe conduct for exiting a helicopter, but we guess the rotor isn't spinning, so...

All stock offices come with boardrooms with a cool 3D map of Los Santos that has both purchased and available warehouses marked, a home cinema with a gaming system (and hence a mini-game) and your handy SecuroServe desktop which will be used to coordinate your corporate activities.

Your Personal Assistant

Another bonus that all CEOs in GTA Online will get with their office is a personal assistant, the gender of which can be freely chosen by the player. The assistant does all kinds of nifty things, like keeping you notified of the happenings regarding your business; they call in Pegasus vehicles to your office's landing pad; they recover impounded rides and enable fast travel back to the office.

Your assistant provides a suite of useful services.

However, undoubtedly their most useful feature is refilling your snacks.

For free.

That alone earns them a raise, no.

SecuroServe

Once you have the office, you should simply access that SecuroServe terminal we talked about and register yourself as a GTA Online CEO (if only it were so easy in real life). There are fewer restrictions in place for CEO-hood than there were for being a VIP — there is no required minimum bank balance, there is no time limit nor is there a cooldown period after un-CEOing yourself.

Warehouses

Next up, in order to become a black market kingpin you need stuff to sell — but before you acquire said stuff, you need someplace that stuff goes. That someplace happens to be a warehouse — or, actually, up to five warehouses. These come in small, medium and large flavors, but buying one isn't final as you can always upgrade.

At least it isn't gold-plated.

These warehouses all come stocked with a workbench which can be used to apply special upgrades to delivery vehicles. These upgrades are particularly useful against socially insecure players who live out their fantasies in GTA Online as they include the likes of armor plating and homing missile jammers.

The temptation to go for the flashiest office and to stock up on large warehouses early on might be strong, but we suggest not to take that leap — it will set you back several million which you won't earn back quickly, but you can always upgrade later. Black market missions need time to get a move on, so you'll be doing a lot of work before turning a profit — however, once things start up, you'll be making tons of dough.

Players can purchase warehouses in a range of sizes—small, medium, and large—each with a specific crate holding capacity. Large warehouses offer the most holding space, while small warehouses offer the least.

Both acquiring and selling goods is dangerous business.

Buy Missions (Crates)

Once you're set up with a warehouse, its time to go on your first buy mission. These missions are where you acquire crates of cargo that you will later sell for a greater amount, hence profit. You can choose to carry one to three crates at a time, however the more you carry, the greater the risk.

These crates will attract the attention of other players and NPC enemies as well, so you need to make sure your team is ready for opposition. Sometimes it is worth doing multiple 1 crate missions instead of risking the three, however at other times the opposite is true.

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First you fill your warehouse, then you fill your wallet.

Selling Your Cargo

After completing some buy missions, you will be offered the option to try your hand at a special cargo mission. Here, the cargo is worth a lot to the people you will sell it, however picking it up will broadcast your location to every player in the session while spawning tons of NPC enemies. This is a high risk, high reward scenario recommended only for skilled teams.

Now that your warehouses are loaded, it is time to turn those crates into profit. These are once more risk-reward scenarios, where the missions for those buyers willing to may more are also more dangerous.

You can manipulate the prices for which your goods go to some extent by stockpiling — if you don't sell off your merchandise, the demand and therefore the value will increase. However, the more valuable cargo is, the more likely NPC gangs will attack said warehouse, forcing you to protect your goods.

Being a CEO is a game of risk assessment. Will you take one, two or three crates? Will you risk saving time in the face of greater opposition? Will you stockpile your goods in spite of raiding parties? Will you sell to the highest bidder and brave the tougher missions?

You and your associates will face a number of different scenarios.

In the end, both the safe and the quick routes will turn profits. The safe route is more time consuming, however the quick route will see you lose more often.

Solo Lobbies

So why can CEO activities only be done in public GTA Online lobbies? Apparently because one must also accept the risks of other players spitting in their soup and whatnot. However, this is a bit unfair considering how many assholes inhabit GTA Online. In order to complete your CEO missions in peace, feel free to reference the solo public lobby guide we linked earlier on.

You can conduct your affairs through SecuroServe.

More VIP Work

Sure, the main attraction in this DLC is the crate smuggling, but plenty of other features also fit into the update alongside that aspect. More VIP challenges and jobs were added to the joy of players, as these were among the most lucrative activities added in Executives.

The new VIP jobs, much like the old guard, offer greater rewards in the face of greater risk — the objectives are more difficult and other VIPs/Organisations can have at the same objective or hinder your progress for some cash of their own.

Headhunter

First up in the list of new VIP work is Headhunter, which takes "elimination of the competition" in the most literal way possible. You and your associates are tasked with killing some targets spread across the GTA Online map — however, you'll do well not to dally, as there is a time limit within which you must complete this activity.

Headhunter isn't no blue milk run, as the targets and their guards have greater-than-average armor and health going for them. Even if you're not soloing, going in on foot all-guns-blazing will waste you in no time. Either approach with a vehicle, or apply stealth — long distance kills will help you keep your blood inside your body and it comes in handy when you need to turn tail.

This is probably Rockstar's satire at work here. In the real world, more often than not the bosses of companies — be they legal or otherwise — keep the winnings for themselves and only pay their employees pebbles. Unfortunately, players cannot alter the payment ratio for Associates.

The solution? Rotate who is the CEO at regular intervals, either defined by time or money earned. Your organisation will remain unchanged and you can always switch back. This will result in fair payouts.

Cashing Out

First up in the new line-up is Cashing Out. The associates are tasked with hacking as many ATMs as possible before the timer hits zero — more importantly, they need to hack more ATMs than the other. Since the world of GTA Online is teeming with cash machines, this challenge will always be cutting it pretty close.

One way to prevent other players from surpassing you in this challenge is pretty simple — kill them. On the flip side, in order to prevent yourself being killed you should put some distance between yourself and your opponents instead of hitting the closest ATMs.

Being a chameleon would certainly benefit players during this challenge, as you should always keep an eye on your minimap, as planning which ATM to hit based on opponent movements is crucial. To prevent others from doing the same, you should call Lester to take you off the radar.

You'll need to be speedy if you want to succeed — you have 60 seconds after starting a hack before the cops latch on your tail, which is more than a slight nuisance. Some of the faster vehicles in GTA Online will benefit you here.

Salvage

Finally you have Salvage, taking players to the seas around the GTA Online map. You'll be starting on the shore, but swimming isn't the fastest way to the target area — keep an eye out for Seasharks nearby.

Once again, offing your opponents to keep their score low is a good tactic — however you'll need to get close and personal, since knives are the only weapons you'll have. You can always leave your more rowdy rivals to duke it out while you swim over to a quieter bit of ocean.