Organised crime goes online: realities and challenges

Date05 May 2015
Pages153-168
Published date05 May 2015
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JMLC-10-2014-0035
AuthorAnita Lavorgna
Subject MatterAccounting & Finance,Financial risk/company failure,Financial compliance/regulation
Organised crime goes online:
realities and challenges
Anita Lavorgna
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this article is to provide an empirically based description of how the Internet
is exploited by different types of organised crime groups (OCGs), ranging from Italian maa-style
groups to looser gangs.
Design/methodology/approach The article relies on a dataset collected from mid-2011 to
mid-2013 and, specically, on semi-structured interviews to law enforcement ofcials and
acknowledged experts in Italy, the UK, the USA and The Netherlands; judicial transcripts; police
records; and media news.
Findings – This article provides an account of the main scope for which the Internet has been used for
various criminal activities traditionally associated with the organised crime rhetoric, rst and foremost,
cross-border trafcking activities. This study also discusses some current legal and policy approaches
to deal with OCGs operating online.
Originality/value – This contribution addresses an under-investigated research eld and aims to
foster a reection on the opportunity to integrate Internet crime research, and even more Internet crime
investigations, into the everyday routines of criminologists, analysts and law enforcement ofcers.
Keywords Organised crime, Criminal opportunities, Internet crime, Maa, Online policing
Paper type Research paper
When organised crime meets the Internet: addressing a scholarly gap
Contemporary society has been affected by major changes in the ways in which we
interact and communicate with each other, thanks to the use of the Internet. Indeed, the
Internet has peculiar characteristics when compared with other information and
communication technologies (ICTs), being not only a technical tool but also a part of
today’s culture (Maltzahn, 2005). The Internet can be conceived as a new social
environment characterised by being virtual, dynamic, interactive, global,
commercialised and networkable. Its usage has become widespread: the world’s online
population is estimated to be above 2.5 billion, about 33 per cent of world total
population (Internet World Stats, 2013).
There is a broad consensus that the Internet has offered plenty of new possibilities for
all types of criminals, including organised crime. When considering intersections
between “organised crime” and “Internet crime”, two different outcomes are possible:
organised cybercriminals and organised crime groups (OCGs)involved in traditional
activities and exploiting new criminal opportunities provided by the Internet.Inthe
former case, the focus is on criminal actors operating Internet crimes as identied, for
instance, by the 2001 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime[1]; organised cybercriminals
exploit ICTs and, specically, the Internet to commit criminal activities which target
mainly computer systems or data[2]. In the latter case, the focus is rather on
conventional OCGs (also operative ofine) operating Internet-mediated criminal
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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Organised
crime goes
online
153
Journalof Money Laundering
Control
Vol.18 No. 2, 2015
pp.153-168
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1368-5201
DOI 10.1108/JMLC-10-2014-0035
activities – i.e. activities in which the Internet has been used as a primary crime
facilitator, but it is not necessarily an inherent part of the criminal activity per se.
So far, the existing criminological literature has mostly addressed organised
cybercriminals (Wall, 2007;Koops, 2011;Broadhurst et al., 2014;Lusthaus, 2013;Wall,
2014). In particular, scholarly research has studied criminal groups carrying out new
types of offences targeting computer networks themselves – such as malware attacks
and hacking – and committed by means of a computer system or network – such as
identity theft, fraud and child pornography. As reported by McCusker (2011),as
cybercrime became pivotal in the international security agenda, some characteristics of
organised crime have been attributed to cybercriminality, which has led to some
confusion whether organised cybercrime is a derivation of traditional OGCs or an
evolution of such groups within the online space. For instance, it has been claimed that,
even if organised crime and cybercrime are not synonymous and will never be (as the
former continues to exist in the real world, and the latter is often perpetrated by
individuals), these two phenomena overlap (Williams, 2001) and even that organised
crime entered in a new era, in which both traditional crime gangs and new types of
organisation can prosper and grow in new types of crimes (McGuire, 2012). As recently
underlined by Broadhurst et al. (2014), however, groups involved in cybercrimes often
do not meet the standard denition of organised crime as contained in the 2000 United
Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (Palermo Convention)[3],
even if in certain cases, networks operating online are highly sophisticated.
This article focusses on OGCs involved in traditional activities and exploiting new
criminal opportunities provided by the Internet, a category that remains under-
investigated. Although an increasing number of reports and newspapers note that the
Internet is a tool exploited by organised crime, they seem not to pay enough attention to
the modalities and the extent to which this is true: it is not easy to distinguish between
new stereotypes and what is actually going on. Evidence that OCGs exploit the Internet
for carrying out their illegal businesses has been compiled during the past decade by
international bodies such as the INCB (2011), Interpol (Khoo Boon Hui, 2011) and
Europol (2011). The past two Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessments (Europol,
2011,2014), in particular, have stressed how Internet-mediated economies facilitate all
types of ofine organised criminality. However, apart from anecdotic evidence, there is
still little research on what types of groups use the Internet, to what degree and for what
types of activities[4]. It is logical to think that criminal opportunities provided by the
Internet should be attractive for traditional organised criminal groups – and especially
for those operating large-scale trafcking activities as in the usual narrative of
“transnational organised crime” (Longo, 2010) – but it is not self-evident whether these
groups have the characteristics and the abilities to exploit such opportunities
(McCusker, 2006, p. 257). Indeed, empirical differences between the physical world and
cyberspace could prevent the effective transfer of certain existing criminal activities;
similarly, criminal organisations that have proven successful in the real world could not
suit in a different environment (Brenner, 2002)[5].
Therefore, the need for this study originates from the awareness that existing
criminological literature has neither sufciently addressed the rate of the criminal
adaptability of traditional organised crime when it comes to the use of the Internet nor
identied current trends in the criminal panorama on this point. This descriptive article
aims at presenting some ndings regarding how the Internet is exploited by different
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