Criminal Collaboration Research Articles

Criminal nomads: The role of multiple memberships in the criminal collaboration network between Hells Angels MC and Bandidos MC

ABSTRACT Outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs) have received increased attention from both law enforcement agencies and the research community. This study investigates the criminal collaboration patterns of two OMGs with a long history of hostilities. We use government data on individuals registered as belonging to Hells Angels MC, Bandidos MC and individuals with multiple OMG memberships, and suspicion data from 2011 to 2016 to build co-offending networks. Our results show that members of multiple OMGs tend to have higher centrality and clustering. These members also have the highest levels of suspicions per capita, and most of the co-offending is related to nexus links involving multiple membership individuals. They can be described as ‘criminal nomads’, collaborating with individuals from different organisations. Our results suggest that core members tend to engage in white-collar crime to a greater extent than those on the periphery, which tend to engage more in violence and drug crime.

The Interurban Network of Criminal Collaboration in Canada

The interurban network of criminal collaboration in Canada is described, and possible explanations for its structure are explored. The data include all police-reported co-offences in the 32 major cities of Canada during 2006–09. Component analysis and graph drawings in network space and in geospace elucidate the structure of the network. Quadratic assignment procedure multiple regressions, repeated separately on the networks of instrumental and noninstrumental co-offences, test hypotheses about possible determinants of the network structure. The cities form one connected component, containing two clusters connected by a link between Toronto and Vancouver. One cluster, centred on the triad of Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, comprises the cities in Ontario and Quebec, with weak links to cities in the Atlantic provinces. The other cluster, centred on Vancouver, comprises the cities in the four western provinces. The structure is strongly correlated with the residential mobility of the general population, which in turn is strongly correlated with intercity distances. The correlation with mobility is less strong for instrumental than for noninstrumental crimes. The structure of this co-offending network can be explained by criminals’ routine activities, namely ordinary residential mobility, but the alternative explanation of purposive interurban criminal collaboration is more plausible for instrumental crime.

The Fraud theories: Triangle, Diamond, Pentagon

Early indications of fraud play an important role in detection and prevention. Murphy and Dacin (2011) state frauds mostly occur in three ways: error - lacking awareness, intuition supporting fraud - avoiding negative emotions or effects, and, awareness of fraud coupled with cost-benefit analysis. Hutchison (2013) comparing management fraud to human behaviour says fraud is intentional, multidimensional, and complex - the fallout of several interactive factors, analysis fraud through different abstracts - organisational systems, conflicts of interest, rational choice, social constructiveness, psychodynamic and developmental outlook. The proposed unrealistic goals rewarding attractive compensations purport indulgence in fraud. The desire for achievements, fear of losing the job, challenges meeting financial targets for bonuses, unhealthy competition and criminal collaborations are causes of financial fraud. Management fraud results from decision-making, influenced by personality traits, beliefs, attitudes, social customs, institutional rules and regulations, ethical values, and organisational culture. The paper aims to understand fraud and the theories related to fraud.

Between Foreigners, Strangers and Jews: The Changing Perception of Parisian Jews on the Eve of the 1306 Expulsion

Abstract An unpublished document from late thirteenth-century Paris contains evidence of a Jewish-Christian public confrontation, on the one hand, and of Jewish-Christian economic criminal collaboration on the other. Using methods of micro-history, this article traces the story of Merot the Jew and his father-in-law, Benoait of St. Denis, who were caught attempting to smuggle merchandise by way of the River Seine. Their story is told in a verdict handed down by the parloir de Paris, the municipal judicial authority in charge of economic infractions. The parloir decreed the complete confiscation of Merot and Benoait’s merchandise on the grounds that “they were foreigners.” Taking this terminology as a point of departure, this paper tackles broader socio-economic aspects of belonging and foreignness among medieval Parisian Jews, and asks: in what ways were Jews considered “foreigners” in late thirteenth-century Paris? What were the implications of such a designation, and how did these perceptions change in the years leading up to the expulsion of 1306?

Come at the king, you best not miss: criminal network adaptation after law enforcement targeting of key players

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the impact of the targeting of key players by law enforcement on the structure, communication strategies, and activities of a drug trafficking network. Data are extracted from judicial court documents. The unique nature of the investigation – which saw a key player being arrested mid-investigation but police monitoring continuing for another year – allows to compare the network before and after targeting. This paper combines a quantitative element where network statistics and exponential random graph models are used to describe and explain structural changes over time, and a qualitative element where the content of wiretapped conversations is analysed. After law enforcement targeting, network members favoured security over efficiency, although criminal collaboration continued after the arrest of the key player. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the efficiency-security trade-off in criminal networks, and discusses policy implications for repressive policies in illegal drug markets.

Uncovering the degree of criminal organization: Swedish street gangs and the role of mobility and co-offending networks

In this study we investigate organized crime by studying the degree of criminal organization. We use population-level register data on criminal suspicions between 2011 and 2016 to analyze the territoriality of Swedish street gangs in terms of geographical mobility, their collaboration in crime through their co-offending network's clustering and community structure, and their crime versatility. Although Swedish street gangs exhibit varying degrees of geographical mobility and criminal collaboration, overall, they have limited reach along these dimensions, characterized by low clustering and limited crime specialization. Violence seems to become a necessary tool only when a gang reaches a certain degree of organization. By unbraiding criminal mobility and its association with other organizational elements such as criminal collaboration in different settings, we provide insights into the structure and dynamics of criminal organizations and contribute to a richer understanding and conceptualization of how crime is organized.

Rural criminal collaborations and the food crimes of the countryside: realist social relations theory of illicit venison production

This article provides the first comprehensive criminological account of routinised illicit venison production in rural England. In doing so an epistemological reformulation and conceptual clarification of the overlooked problem is advanced, using extended fieldwork and a novel theoretical framework. The account of offending is refined to a type of illicit rural food enterprise supply chain misconduct, actualised by un-regulated industry processes. This kind of food crime is shown to be reliant upon suspects’ connectivity with small to medium food business operations and the routines of rural occupations. Such relations with licit rural-centric commerce are the necessary conditions of offending, which are enabled by the contingent conditions of sub-optimal game meat traceability systems and an absence of regulatory oversight at critical junctures. An outcome that is structurally inscribed into legislation and induces non-compliance. The article addresses the current lacuna of research on venison meat food crimes in the British context and advances an innovative realist social relations theory to explain the crime commissioning process.

Vertical organizations, flat networks: Centrality and criminal collaboration in the Italian-American Mafia

While criminal organizations often feature hierarchical positions, scholars debate the extent to which networks of informal collaboration among criminals reflect such hierarchies. This research uses historical data on collaboration involving more than 700 criminals across 24 Italian-American Mafia families and applies network regression models and simulations to determine whether mafiosi of similar centrality-based status were more likely to be criminal associates than mafiosi of dissimilar status. Rather than forming vertical collaborations linking mafia members into a centralized, hierarchical network structure, we find that mafiosi collaborated disproportionately more with colleagues of similar status. While network centrality predicted tie formation, formal rank in an organizational chart generally did not. Knowledge simply of a covert organization’s formal structure may not translate to understanding “on-the-ground” collaborations.

To racketeer among neighbors: spatial features of criminal collaboration in the American Mafia

ABSTRACT The American Mafia is a network of criminals engaged in drug trafficking, violence and other illegal activities. Here, we analyze a historical spatial social network (SSN) of 680 Mafia members found in a 1960 investigatory dossier compiled by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The dossier includes connections between members who were ‘known criminal associates’ and members are geolocated to a known home address across 15 major U.S. cities. Under an overarching narrative of identifying the network’s proclivities toward security (dispersion) or efficiency (ease of coordination), we pose four research questions related to criminal organizations, power and coordination strategies. We find that the Mafia network is distributed as a portfolio of nearby and distant ties with significant spatial clustering among the Mafia family units. The methods used here differ from former methods that analyze the point pattern locations of individuals and the social network of individuals separately. The research techniques used here contribute to the body of non-planar network analysis methods in GIScience and can be generalized to other types of spatially-embedded social networks.

Multilevel determinants of collaboration between organised criminal groups

Collaboration between members of different criminal groups is an important feature of crime that is considered organised, as it allows criminals to access resources and skills in order to exploit illicit economic opportunities. Collaboration across criminal groups is also difficult and risky due to the lack of institutions supporting peaceful cooperation in illicit markets. Thus cross-group collaboration has been thought to take place mostly among small and transient groups. This paper determines whether and under what conditions members of different, larger organised crime groups collaborate with one another. To do so we use intelligence data from the Canadian province of Alberta, centering on criminals and criminal groups engaged in multiple crime types in multiple geographic locations. We apply a multilevel network analytical framework and exponential random graph models using Bayesian techniques to uncover the determinants of cross-group criminal collaboration. We find cross-group collaboration depends not only on co-location, but also on the types of groups to which the criminals are affiliated, and on illicit market overlap between groups. When groups are operating in the same geographically-situated illicit markets their members tend not to collaborate with one another, providing evidence for the difficulty or undesirability of cross-group collaboration in illicit markets. Conversely, members of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs are more likely to collaborate across groups when markets overlap, suggesting the superior capacity and motivation of biker gangs to coordinate criminal activity. Our paper contributes to the understanding of criminal networks as complex, emergent, and spatially embedded market phenomena.

Strong by concealment? How secrecy, trust, and social embeddedness facilitate corporate crime

This article examines how corporate crime is organised through studying the longevity of illegal business cartels. Previous studies demonstrate cartels can remain undetected for years or decades. Similar to criminal networks, cartel participants need to communicate in order to collaborate effectively, but operate covertly at the same time. The case study analysis of fourteen Dutch cartel cases in this study demonstrates two main findings. First, cartel participants communicate frequently and elaborately, and the need for trust and communication impedes concealment. Second, the longevity of cartels cannot be explained by isolation from but by embeddedness in their social environment. The context of legitimacy and a facilitating environment are significant factors. Criminal collaboration is studied extensively in literature on organised crime, however gained little attention in the literature on corporate crime. Hereby, this study contributes to an understanding of how corporate criminal conduct is organised, by applying relevant theory on criminal networks gleaned from the literature on organised crime.

Análise Econômica da Racionalidade do Acordo de Colaboração Premiada

Este artigo pretende questionar se o acordo de colaboração premiada, previsto no art. 4º da Lei nº 12.850/2013, é uma decisão economicamente racional sob o ponto de vista do acusado colaborador. Para essa finalidade, serão expostos os elementos constituintes do acordo de colaboração premiada, demonstrando que sua instauração no sistema penal brasileiro ocorreu em um contexto de urgência pela resposta penal e de ineficiência dos instrumentos tradicionais de investigação. Em seguida, será utilizada a metodologia da análise econômica do direito para examinar a racionalidade da decisão do acusado de colaborar com as investigações. O trabalho conclui que a decisão de colaborar com as investigações não constitui escolha racional de acordo com os pressupostos da economia neoclássica. Partindo dos substratos da economia comportamental, verifica-se que a decisão é influenciada por vieses cognitivos causados por assimetria de informações entre acusação e defesa e pela utilização da prisão cautelar como forma de alteração da perspectiva do acusado. Dessa forma, o sistema conduz à utilização irracional da colaboração, que precisa ser equilibrada com outros instrumentos jurídicos indutores de comportamento.

Fraud Theories: Explanation of Financial Statement Fraud

The knowledge of fraud symptoms and causes is an important factor in preventing and detecting fraud. The fraud occurred in three different ways: lack of awareness of acting fraudulently (by error), awareness coupled with rationalization to avoid negative affect or emotion (individual’s intuition support committing fraud), or awareness coupled with reasoning through cost-benefit analysis (individual’s intuition unclear) (Murphy & Dacin, 2011). Previous studies had attributed the financial statements fraud (management fraud) to different reasons. Williams (2012) suggested that the management fraud is motivated by proposed unrealistic goals supported by attractive compensations. The manager works diligently to meets established goals, such maximizing the wealth of shareholders, which may cause them to manipulate the accounting records. Teed (2013) proposed that managers are emboldened to commit a fraud and financial misbehavior due to the lack of controls by the SEC and others and the inability to deter and detect fraud. Frankel (2012) attributed the management fraud to CEO's unethical financial decisions and the complexity of information technology. The financial fraud is also warranted by a desire to achieve goals and objectives, unhealthy competition, fear of losing one's job/bonuses, criminal collaboration, and challenges in meeting financial targets (Omar & Rizuan, 2014). Fraud is a worldwide, multifaceted phenomenon, whose contextual factors may not fit into a particular framework (Lokanan, 2015). The management fraud, like human behavior, is an intentional, complex, multidimensional act that results from multiple interactive factors (Hutchison, 2013). It can be viewed from eight different theoretical perspectives: systems, conflict, rational choice, social constructivist, social behavioral, psychodynamic, and developmental perspective (Hutchison, 2013). The system perspective views human behavior as mutual interactions among individuals within a linked system, whereas conflict perspective claims that individuals advance their own interests over others exploiting their powers (Hutchison, 2013). The rational choice perspective proposes that individuals behave in a self-interests manner to accomplish goals by maximizing benefits and minimizing costs through social resources trade-off, whereas social constructivist perspective suggests that social interactions shape individual learning (Hutchison, 2013). The social behavioral suggests that environments interactions shape individual behavior, whereas psychodynamic perspective claims that human behavior is motivated by internal innate/forces such as needs, emotion, and mental activity, and developmental perspective claim that human behavior develops in age- graded stages through interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors.

Criminals seeking ICT-expertise: an exploratory study of Dutch cases

Which opportunities due to digitization are exploited by criminals? And how do criminals gather the required ICT-expertise to take advantage of these opportunities? This exploratory study provides insight into criminals seeking ICT-expertise by analyzing five Dutch cases. This paper shows that criminals seeking ICT-expertise take advantage of companies and employees in the ICT-sector that act in a gray area. It is noteworthy that the initial contact of criminals seeking ICT-expertise is often immediately directed to criminal collaboration. In these cases, ‘capacity’ is more important than ‘contact’. Furthermore, this paper discusses the role of forums for criminals seeking ICT-expertise. Criminals take advantage of the transfer of knowledge on forums and the existence of crimeware-as-a-service. Finally, this study falsifies the statement that there is a clear division between traditional offender groups taking advantage of the possibilities arising from ICT, and crime groups operating exclusively online. In practice, there are many connections between online and offline activities.

Terminating the criminal collaboration in pancreatic cancer: Nanoparticle-based synergistic therapy for overcoming fibroblast-induced drug resistance.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a lethal cancer with a dismal overall prognosis mainly unchanged over the past decades. PDAC is generally refractory to conventional treatments, and thus novel therapies are urgently needed. Recently, accumulating evidence has indicated that human pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) facilitate PDAC development and drug resistance through paracrine activation of hedgehog pathway. Here, we report that smart SN38 (active metabolite of irinotecan) polymeric prodrug-based nanoparticles effectively encapsulate the commercial hedgehog pathway inhibitor GDC-0449 for co-delivery. More intriguingly, we obtained size-tunable nanoparticles with increased GDC-0449 loading efficiency by simply extending the chain length of the hydrophobic SN38 block. To better evaluate the efficacy and investigate the synergistic mechanisms, we immortalized human PSCs and established fibroblast-containing models invitro and invivo. In PSCs, BxPC-3cells and MIA PaCa-2cells, GDC-0449 suppressed the co-culture induced up-regulations of the two drug resistance contributors: sonic hedgehog transcription factor glioma-associated protein1 (GLI-1) and UGT1A glucuronosyltransferase. Importantly, the nanoparticle-mediated co-delivery system exhibited potent antitumor efficacy with enhanced apoptosis and reduced collagen, α-SMA and GLI-1 expression in tumor tissues. These findings reveal a potential strategy to utilize nanoparticle-mediated drug co-delivery platform as an effective combination therapy for fibroblast-enriched PDAC.

Criminal organizing applying the theory of partial organization to four cases of organized crime

We explore how the idea of partial organization can provide insights in the study of organized crime. Studying criminal organizing with a theoretical framework used for other social organizing phenomena can help us see the interplay between different forms of criminal collaboration under a single analytical lens, and start a discussion on whether criminal organizing is intrinsically different from other types of social organizing. We analyze four cases of criminal collaboration in Sweden between 1990 and 2015: the Syriac mafia, the Hells Angels Mc Sweden, the street gang Werewolf Legion, and the Hallunda robbery. While the outlaw motorcycle gang, and to a certain extent the street gang, are complete organizations, the mafia is based around and heavily parasitic on other institutions. We have also shown that time-bounded projects are found in the criminal context, with these emerging from strong network relations. Our results show that most of the elements of criminal organizing are not formalized and that partial organization is at least as important and powerful as complete organization.

Organizing on two wheels: uncovering the organizational patterns of Hells Angels MC in Sweden

During the last decades, Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs (OMCs) have become a concern for crime prevention and law enforcement agencies. The general perception of OMCs is ambiguous. They are seen either as highly structured criminal organizations whose members use their motorcycle clubs for conducting sophisticated criminal enterprises, or as clubs built around the camaraderie of freedom-seeking bikers. Using unique Swedish longitudinal data on gang membership and co-offending patterns, we study the organizational dynamics of Hells Angels MC Sweden and its sub-organizations Red & White Crew and Red Devils MC. Our results reveal a complex picture. Co-offending network patterns and offense type distributions vary for each sub-organization, indicating potential differences in organizational dynamics. Red & White Crew has features that are more similar to street gangs than OMCs, and Red Devils MC has a more decentralized and chapter-based pattern of criminal collaboration than Hells Angels MC. Besides increasing our understanding of OMC collaboration structure, our results have implications for crime prevention strategies. We suggest that social responses and law enforcement efforts should take into account the heterogeneity of OMCs in order to avoid counterproductive consequences in terms of increased group cohesiveness.

Criminal collaboration and risk: The drivers of Al Qaeda’s network structure before and after 9/11

A group’s resilience is often linked to its network structure. While decentralized network properties have been associated with resilience at the group-level, little is known about the individual-level factors that lead groups to adopt these structures. Criminal groups, consistently faced with unexpected external disruptions, provide an opportunity to examine individual decisions to collaborate across periods of increased risk. Using data on 118 terrorist offenders across six attacks we test whether individual decisions to collaborate are influenced by variation in law enforcement activity. Results from exponential random graph models demonstrate that many of the processes that drive collaboration between offenders differ when faced with greater risk. Connectivity was maximized in periods of decreased enforcement activity, with offenders more likely to collaborate in dense, local triads. Following an increase in interdictions, triad closure had no impact on co-offending.

Gender and Age Segregation and Stratification in Criminal Collaborations

Assess gender and age segregation and stratification among co-offenders. The population comprises co-offenders aged 5–75 in police-reported co-offenses in Canada, 2006–2009. Segregation is indicated by observed and inbreeding homophily, measured with cross-tabulations and log-linear distance models. Stratification is assessed with elaborations by crime type. Intersectionality of gender and age status is estimated with interaction terms in the log-linear models. Female and younger offenders are over-represented among co-offenders. Co-offending exhibits gender and age status homophily: same-gender dyads are approximately twice as frequent as mixed-gender, and same-age-status dyads are almost 7 times as frequent as mixed-age-status. Gender homophily varies by crime type, being stronger in robbery, aggravated assault, common assault, and minor theft, and weaker in serious drug crime and homicide, and (especially) sex crimes against children. Age homophily is strong in all types of crime. Gender and age homophily have a negative interaction: dyads comprising a female child or youth and an adult male occur 1.4 times as frequently as predicted from the main effects of gender and age status. Female and younger offenders are not excluded from co-offending per se but, consistent with expectations from Blau’s (Inequality and heterogeneity. Free Press, New York, 1977) and Steffensmeier’s (Soc Forces 6:1010–1032, 1983) theories, they are segregated from co-offending with male and (especially) adult offenders. There was limited evidence of gender stratification, and no evidence of age stratification. The interaction of gender and age status in the segregation and stratification of co-offending attenuates their individual effects, contrary to expectations from feminist intersectionality theory and consistent with Blau’s (1977) theory.

Surveying American State Police Agencies About Lone Wolves, Far-Right Criminality, and Far-Right and Islamic Jihadist Criminal Collaboration

This study presents state police agencies’ perceptions about three significant terrorism issues on which there is little empirical research. All three issues have significant implications for understanding the role of state police agencies in responding to terrorism threats. First, the authors investigated whether the respondents believed that supporters of specified extremist movements tended to commit crimes as lone wolves, with others, or both alone and with others. Second, they were asked to provide data to gauge how often far-right extremists committed 13 crime types that varied in magnitude and motivation. Third, they were asked if they had knowledge about whether far-right extremists and Islamic jihadists had cooperated to commit crimes. These data were collected by surveying the 50 state police agencies in the United States. The results indicate that state police officials are concerned with both group and lone-wolf activities. Importantly, there was variation in the potential for lone-wolf crimes when comparing different types of extremist movements. The results indicate that far-right extremists are involved in a range of terrorist, preparatory, and routine criminal activities, but this involvement varies by region. Two state police agencies also indicated that they knew of Islamic and far-right collaboration. The study identified two other instances of direct collaboration and a number of other interesting cases through open source searches. The article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the findings and outlines directions for future research.