There is a select group of products, such as executive jets, super yachts and Renaissance paintings, that are so expensive that if you need to ask the price you can’t afford it.

In Melbourne, there is a security service that never advertises and if you try to find a staff list you are wasting your time. This group can only be contacted by word of mouth. While they are expensive, their clients are not usually millionaires. They are billionaires.

The staff don’t put their CVs on LinkedIn. There is no need. They are former Special Operations Group police and ex-commando or SAS members.

Graeme Thorne’s body was found six weeks laterCredit: Fairfax Media

The clients are usually the newest of new-money moguls. Young men who have made fortunes through cryptocurrency, online gaming and social media platforms.

The money may be new, but the crime is old – kidnap. Find someone rich, steal a loved one then demand a ransom.

One of the most infamous crimes in Australia was the 1960 abduction and murder of Graeme Thorne in Sydney taken as he walked to his school in Bondi.

His parents had won the £100,000 first prize in the Opera House Lottery. The winners’ names and address were published in the newspapers.

Failed insurance salesman Stephen Bradley demanded £25,000 pounds or the boy would be fed to the sharks. Thorne’s body was found in a scrub-covered block six weeks later and Bradley was convicted of the murder.

In July Australian billionaire crypto casino operator Tim Heath fought off kidnappers who tried to grab him at his Estonia home.

They posed as painters and decorators to gain access and planned to take him to a remote safe house until a ransom was paid.

Elite security is no longer about standing around in tight-fitting skivvies looking tough. It is a science and a difficult one in today’s age of social media.

The first thing our team (we will call them the Thunderbirds) does is to take a deep dive into a client’s media footprint. Can a team of kidnappers plot the movement of a target by what they find on open-source platforms?

Can cyber gangs infiltrate the business and personal internet network?

A perfect example occurred last year at a prestigious UK golf course. A wealthy Chinese businessman was playing at the Brocket Hall course in Hertfordshire when he was dragged into a car by a gang of five armed men who kept him in a cage for 30 hours demanding a ransom of $US15........

© The Age