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In the 1980s, the Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth (1930–1998) devised a theory of money which cast a harsh light on the most important means of social exchange. True as it may be, it is trite to say that money comes from dubious business. However, the artist went far beyond this simple observation. Far from being a beautiful soul, Dieter Roth argued that money springs forth, in essence, from the same dark and criminal origin as fear. Money, he says, is a kind of “magical tranquilizer, used to pacify,” but, in reality, it originates in the “murderous depths of our nightmares.” Dieter Roth earned a lot of money, which he always spent on his family or friends, his artistic productions, and his books.. However, he also squandered it, or even destroyed it. Twice a week, I work as a psychoanalyst for inmates at a prison in northern France. I will demonstrate how Roth’s theory, as an integral part of his thought and of his art, has helped me to grasp the links between crime, justice, and society. His work stood in deliberate opposition to artistic practices which, like religion, only serve to feed our illusions and act as an analgesic. Roth, on the other hand, approached reality as something that cannot be represented and destroyed the fantasy that, like a protective shield, separates subject from symptom. He thus allows us to reconsider two hypotheses related to the relationship between crime and society: the Freudian hypothesis of a primal crime (the murder of the father) as the source of law, and the refutation of that idea by Lacan’s axiom, based on Saint Paul, according to which jouissance presupposes the law. If money, which is one of the major social institutions, originates in crime, then a clear-cut separation between crime and society is nothing but wishful thinking.