Dutch authorities issued an arrest warrant and bounty on Riphagen in 1988 but it later transpired that he had died at a Swiss private clinic in Montreux in 1973.

He stayed in the United States for two years working for Standard Oil, during which time he came into contact with local criminal circles and learned their methods.

He became one of the foremost figures of the Amsterdam underworld, known among the pimps on the Rembrandtplein, and developed a taste for jewellery, precious stones, gambling, as well as dealing in used — sometimes stolen — cars.

It was his task, together with his "colleagues" from the Amsterdam underworld, to uncover the black market as well as to track down Jewish property, which was being sold outside the German foreign exchange regulations.

From 4 to 31 March 1943 the Column, which consisted mainly of professional criminals, handed over 3,190 Jews to the German authorities, who deported them to concentration camps in Eastern Europe.

Riphagen was employed in the last year of the war by the Hoffmann Group of the SD in Assen, which specialized in the detection of shot-down Allied airmen and weapons that had been dropped to the resistance.

After the war Dries Riphagen was wanted by the police for the betrayal of Jews as well as treason and the public prosecutor considered him responsible for the death of at least 200 people.

The Dutch ambassador in Buenos Aires, Floris Carcilius Anne Baron van Pallandt, made a request for extradition, based on lesser offences such as vehicle theft and robbery and which, according to the Argentine judiciary, were already time-barred and for which the submitted evidence was inadequate.

[3] In 2016 the film Riphagen by director Pieter Kuijpers was produced in the Netherlands, the main character being portrayed by actor Jeroen van Koningsbrugge.

[4] The screenplay was written by Thomas van der Ree and Paul Jan Nelisse, based on the book by Middelburg and Ter Steege.