Crime Networks Research Articles

Exogenous Shocks, the Criminal Elite, and Increasing Gender Inequality in Chicago Organized Crime

Criminal organizations, like legitimate organizations, adapt to shifts in markets, competition, regulations, and enforcement. Exogenous shocks can be consequential moments of power consolidation, resource hoarding, and inequality amplification in legitimate organizations, but especially in criminal organizations. This research examines how the exogenous shock of the U.S. prohibition of the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol in 1920 restructured power and inequality in Chicago organized crime. I analyze a unique relational database on organized crime from the early 1900s via a criminal network that tripled in size and centralized during Prohibition. Before Prohibition, Chicago organized crime was small, decentralized, and somewhat inclusive of women at the margins. However, during Prohibition, the organized crime network grew, consolidated the organizational elites, and left out the most vulnerable participants from the most profitable opportunities. This historical case illuminates how profits and organizational restructuring outside of (or in response to) regulatory environments can displace people at the margins.

Involving cross-border organized crime networks from ex-Soviet sources in support of terrorism and their influence on regional economic development

Abstract This paper indicates how the actions of organized crime networks (especially the former the former Soviet Union) can affect, from an economic point of view, the elaboration of policies to combat transnational terrorism. Transnational organized crime poses a significant and growing threat to national and international security, with dire implications for public safety, public health, democratic institutions, and economic stability across the globe. Not only are criminal networks expanding, but they also are diversifying their activities, resulting in the convergence of threats that were once distinct and today have explosive and destabilizing effects. Ex-soviet organized crime networks represent a significant threat to economic growth and democratic institutions. Nuclear material trafficking is an especially prominent concern in the former Soviet Union. Because some terrorist-extremist organizations are criminal groups that have a specific organization, logistics, specific training and education systems that cannot work without having material and financial resources. As a result, one of the most effective ways to fight the threat of terrorist organizations is to combat terrorism financing. Within the European Union, the primary responsibility for combating terrorist financing lies with the Member States. However, the EU can and should play a supporting role in helping to respond to the transnational nature of the threat.

AI against money laundering networks: the Colombian case

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies to fight against money laundering crimes in Colombia. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines Colombian money laundering situations with some methodologies of network science to apply AI tools. Findings This paper identifies the suspicious operations with AI methodologies, which are not common by number, quantity or characteristics within the economic or financial system and normal practices of companies or industries. Research limitations/implications Access to financial institutions’ data was the most difficult element for research because affect the implementation of a set of different algorithms and network science methodologies. Practical implications This paper tries to reduce the social and economic implications from money laundering (ML) that result from illegal activities and different crimes against inhabitants, governments, public resources and financial systems. Social implications This paper proposes a software architecture methodology to fight against ML and financial crime networks in Colombia which are common in different countries. These methodologies complement legal structure and regulatory framework. Originality/value The contribution of this paper is how within the flow already regulated by financial institutions to manage the ML risk, AI can be used to minimize and identify this kind of risk. For this reason, the authors propose to use the graph analysis methodology for monitoring and identifying the behavior of different ML patterns with machine learning techniques and network science methodologies. These methodologies complement legal structure and regulatory framework.

Document Fraud: Will Your Identity Be Secure in the Twenty-first Century?

Document fraud has been qualified by Europol as one of the major cross-cutting engines of organised crime. The use of fraudulent identity and travel documents has been linked to a broad spectrum of criminal activities, ranging from financial scams and trafficking in human beings to terrorism and beyond. Criminals have used counterfeit and forged documents since the emergence of official identity and travel documents in the Late Middle Ages. Since then, criminals have become more creative, adapting and evolving in response to technological advancements in document security. In this regard, despite the introduction of biometric documents, the promise of tamper-proof official documents remains a holy grail, and document fraud still has a future ahead in the twenty-first century. Based on scientific and law enforcement data and sources, this article presents the imaginative modus operandi used by defrauders to counterfeit and forge documents. Considering the point of view of criminologists, forensic scientists, law enforcement and forgers, this article provides insights and opinions about current trends and challenges as well as future prospects. Key issues are raised, such as the involvement of organised crime and criminal networks, as well as the use of the Internet to trade fraudulent identity and travel documents. Current and future methods to investigate and study document fraud are also outlined, and finally four main challenges are presented to provide guidance for future policy implications.

Views on the Most Important Threats from the National Defense Strategy - Corruption, Organized Crime Transnational Organized Crime Terrorism (Cyber Terrorism)

Abstract New threats from cyber bullying, new risks and vulnerabilities, can have serious consequences for national security. For this reason, it is necessary for specialists in preventing and combating terrorism and organized crime to be noticed through ingenuity, predictability and a good knowledge of human psychology. This will ensure the information filter necessary to make the best decisions for the defense of the Romanian state. The Italian intelligence service considers that the terrorist threat is the main security priority and that “Islamic radicalism remains a first-rate threat, despite the significant losses suffered by Daesh (Arabic acronym of the Islamic State - no)” in Iraq and Syria. In addition to terrorism, the Intelligence Services also warn of several other potential threats to the security of the states, including increasing the presence of extreme right-wing groups characterized by racism and intolerance. “These groups have been set up, which have a good implantation especially among the youngest, and the best organized ones do not lack the connections with other organized crime networks. In line with the fight against corruption, it is necessary in the new National Security Strategy to ensure an important place to combat the phenomenon and causes of corruption, corruption being considered a threat to national security.

Studying organized crime networks: Data sources, boundaries and the limits of structural measures

Network studies of organized crime (OC) normally explore two key relational issues: the internal structure of groups and the interactions among groups. The paper first discusses in depth two data sources that have been used to address these questions -- phone wiretaps and police-generated “events”– and reviews issues of validity, reliability and sampling. Next, it discusses challenges related to OC network data in general, focusing on the ‘double boundary specification’ problem and the time span of data collection. We conclude by arguing that structural analysis cannot be divorced from a deep contextual (qualitative) knowledge of the cases. The paper refers to concrete research dilemmas and solutions faced by scholars, including ourselves.

Resilience in sophisticated financial crime networks: a social network analysis of the Madoff Investment Scheme

Despite numerous investigations and studies, the resilience of Madoff’s scheme from at least the 1970s until its collapse in 2008 is poorly understood. This study applies social network analysis (SNA) to the Madoff Investment Scheme in order to identify key factors which support resilience in networks that are engaged in a sophisticated criminal enterprise. The SNA identified four clusters of individuals who performed vital functions within the network: a core leadership group, a compliance group, a capital group and a facilitators group. The study then examined the network’s response to exogenous and endogenous shocks, finding that the Madoff network had been resilient to both exogenous shocks, such as Securities and Exchange Commission examinations, and endogenous shocks, such as significant investor withdrawals, prior to its collapse in 2008. These findings suggest that monitoring network responses to exogenous and endogenous shocks could assist investigators in identifying Ponzi schemes in the future.

Social Capital, Deprivation and Psychological Well-Being among Young Adolescents: A Multilevel Study from England and Wales

Examining the mechanisms influencing mental health and life satisfaction simultaneously allows for a better understanding of adolescents psychological well-being. Six indicators of neighbourhood social capital (NSC), neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation (SecD) and their association with psychological well-being among young adolescents aged 10-15 from England and Wales were investigated. Using a random sample of 5201 adolescents (7253 observations) from the UK Household Longitudinal Study merged to aggregated local area census measures, we fitted a series of multilevel models. The findings showed that not being worried about crime and friendship networks mitigated the negative effects of deprivation on adolescent’s psychological well-being. These findings suggest that some forms of NSC may have a buffering and protective function, with the strongest effects in deprived neighbourhoods. We further found that psychological well-being of adolescents is dependent on both individual vulnerabilities and neighbourhood context. However caution is required if, and when public health policies are formulated to address this issue, given significant variations (27-36%) in the inter- and intra-individual psychological well-being were found among this group over time. Thus, policies designed to improve psychological well-being among adolescents should take into account the role of social processes in transmitting deprivation’s effects, as well as the various forms of social capital.

Online Mining Intrusion Patterns from IDS Alerts

The intrusion detection system (IDS) which is used widely in enterprises, has produced a large number of logs named alerts, from which the intrusion patterns can be mined. These patterns can be used to construct the intrusion scenarios or discover the final objectives of the malicious actors, and even assist the forensic works of network crimes. In this paper, a novel algorithm for the intrusion pattern mining is proposed which aimsto solve the difficult problems of the intrusion action sequence such as the loss of important intrusion actions, the disorder of the action sequence and the random noise actions. These common problems often occur in the real production environment which cause serious performance decrease in the analyzing system. The proposed algorithm is based on the online analysis of the intrusion action sequences extracted from IDS alerts, through calculating the influences of a particular action on the subsequent actions, the real intrusion patterns are discovered. The experimental results show that the method is effective in discovering pattern from the complex intrusion action sequences.

Legal Risk of Net Information Dissemination in Big Data Era

As the rapid development of the Internet and the wide application of big data technology, it has spawned a large number of network users. The free dissemination of various kinds of information has gained new development, but it has also given rise to many new conflicts and problems. This paper is mainly based on the current network information dissemination which has which has three characteristics: first, the information spreads highly effective and freely; second, the information is difficult to judge the authenticity; third, it is related to the netizens’ privacy. That explains the era of big data network information dissemination facing all kinds of legal risk, which involves the citizens’ rights are violated, and the network crime is increasingly serious, legal issues, such as national information security threats, thus put forward to perfect the relevant legal system, strengthen government guide, suggest improving the social regulation.

المكافحة الدولية لحيازة شبكات الجريمة المنظمة تكنولوجيا الإرهاب النووي = International Combat against Organized Crime Networks' Acquisition of Nuclear Terrorism Technology

المكافحة | الدولية | الحيازة | الشبكات | الجريمة | المنظمة | التكنولوجيا | الإرهاب | النووي | الأمن | Combat | International | Acquisition | Networks | Crime | Organization | Terrorism | Nuclear | Security

Formation of Communication Innovations in the Development of the Territorial Telecommunications Complex

The purpose of the thesis is to study existing solutions in the field of content delivery networks. On the basis of the study to propose a model of a distributed content delivery network. Using the model to develop traffic management algorithms within the CDN network to minimize the load on the channel. A model of content delivery network has been developed. Algorithm an algorithm has been developed to evenly distribute the load within the content delivery network and reduce the percentage of rejected requests at the time of peak loads. The algorithm is implemented within a model content delivery network crime reports and evidence. The algorithm is tested on model data, the results confirm a decrease in the percentage of rejected packets and the uniformity of the distribution of requests across the servers. The simulation results show that the heuristic algorithm is almost as good as the optimal solution on simple topologies. On complex topologies, direct comparison is not possible, but it can be seen that the results are close to the optimal solution.

Analysis of geographical migration networks of bride trafficking crime from 2000 to 2018 in China

The objective of this article was to analyze the spatial patterns of bride trafficking crime in China. Based on the origin–destination (OD) information of 2273 cases, three levels (provincial-level, city-level, and district/county-level) of bride trafficking networks were constructed. By using social network analysis, the geographical migration mechanism of bride trafficking on different scales was revealed: (i) Bride trafficking showed a macroscopic pattern from the border areas to the inland areas, especially for the ‘foreign brides’. (ii) Short-distance migration was more likely to occur for the brides with mental illnesses rather the healthy ones. (iii) A small number of core cities controlled a large share of trafficking crime. (iv) The distribution of bride trafficking hotspots was related to traffic conditions and poverty to some extent. Based on these findings, targeted strategies for different types of bride trafficking crime were proposed. The analytical methods used in this study could be applied to other crimes like drug trafficking and cargo smuggling.

Socijalna povezanost kriminalnih mreža u krijumčarenju kokaina u Evropi

This paper is highlighting the main criminal networks that are trafficking cocaine in Europe, through the lenses of social embeddedness and criminal network theories. We will try to show that social ties between European and Latin American organized crime networks, as well as between different European crime networks, are the main reason for the staggering success of European criminal groups in cocaine trafficking in the 21st century. In the beginning, we lay out the social embeddedness theory and criminal network theory, and then we review the main criminal networks involved in cocaine trafficking in Europe and social ties between them, with special attention to Serbian and Montenegrin criminal networks. At the end of the article, we analyze what role does ethnicity, seen as social ties based on common language and tradition, play in cocaine trafficking in Europe.

Shewhart control chart for monitoring the mean of Poisson mixed integer autoregressive processes via Monte Carlo simulation

Most control charts for process monitoring assume independence among observations and that the nature of the characteristics of interest is continuous. However, these assumptions are often violated in practice, include industrial engineering applications. For integer-valued autocorrelated processes, usual control charts have a poor performance. Time-series modeling and modified control limits play a fundamental role in such circumstances. In this paper, we propose a Shewhart control chart for monitoring the mean when observations can be modeled as a first order Poisson mixed integer autoregressive model - POMINAR(1) process. The performance of the proposed approach is investigated based on in-control and out-of-control average run lengths (ARL0 and ARL1, respectively) in different scenarios. Both the determination of the control limits and the evaluation of the chart are done through computational studies using Monte Carlo simulations. Practical use of the proposed approach is illustrated with two real examples for monitoring crime data and network traffic.

Working Paper 31: Applying the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act to gold refineries

Switzerland is the world leader in gold refining. Of the roughly 2,200–3,100 tonnes of raw gold imported into the country each year, the majority is destined for Swiss gold refineries. Together these companies are estimated to refine 50–70 percent of the world’s gold production, transforming it into gold bars, semi-finished products and other goods. 
 The imported gold loses all traces of its origin during the refining process. Due to the high-quality manufacturing standards of Swiss refineries, and the fact that they possess all of the pertinent accreditations, the gold can afterwards be traded as "Swiss" gold on international financial markets without restrictions.
 At the same time, the international gold trade is enormously vulnerable to money laundering operations by drug cartels and other forms of organised crime networks, terrorist organisations, and kleptocrats. As the world centre of gold refining, Switzerland is highly exposed to these money laundering risks. 
 This Working Paper first analyses money laundering risks in the gold trade, supported by examples. This is followed by an overview of the gold refineries' due diligence obligations under existing self-regulation and the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA). It is shown that the self-regulation models have, at best, mixed success and that the core business of the refineries is not subject to the AMLA. Finally, the paper sets out the pros and cons of applying the AMLA obligations to the core business of Swiss refineries.

Key aspects of covert networks data collection: Problems, challenges, and opportunities

Data quality is considered to be among the greatest challenges in research on covert networks. This study identifies six aspects of network data collection, namely nodes, ties, attributes, levels, dynamics, and context. Addressing these aspects presents challenges, but also opens theoretical and methodological opportunities. Furthermore, specific issues arise in this research context, stemming from the use of secondary data and the problem of missing data. While each of the issues and challenges has some specific solution in the literature on organized crime and social networks, the main argument of this paper is to try and follow a more systematic and general solution to deal with these issues. To this end, three potentially synergistic and combinable techniques for data collection are proposed for each stage of data collection – biographies for data extraction, graph databases for data storage, and checklists for data reporting. The paper concludes with discussing the use of statistical models to analyse covert networks and the cultivation of relations within the research community and between researchers and practitioners.

Cows, Charcoal, and Cocaine: Al-Shabaab’s Criminal Activities in the Horn of Africa

Contrary to historical terrorism scholarship, terrorist groups can strategically diversify into a variety of criminal activities without losing their core ideology or support among the civilian population. This pattern is demonstrated by the evolutionary arc of al-Shabaab, which grew from a small subset of Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union to the most violent political actor in the Horn of Africa, able to conduct terrorist attacks as far afield as Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia. Al-Shabaab has been highly successful in creating a narrative of truth and justice provision while simultaneously exploiting the Somali population and engaging in criminal activity. For the group, criminal activity and crime networks serve two primary purposes: as a funding mechanism and as an avenue for recruitment. Using ethnographic fieldwork and process tracing, I find that the group’s criminal activities throughout the Horn of Africa have made the group significantly more resilient to counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns, extending both its lifespan and operational capability.

Development of the Reporting Information about Networks and Groups (RING) task: a method for eliciting information from memory about associates, groups, and networks

PurposeEliciting detailed and comprehensive information about the structure, organisation and relationships between individuals involved in organised crime gangs, terrorist cells and networks is a challenge in investigations and debriefings. Drawing on memory theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test the Reporting Information about Networks and Groups (RING) task, using an innovative piece of information elicitation software.Design/methodology/approachUsing an experimental methodology analogous to an intelligence gathering context, participants (n=124) were asked to generate a visual representation of the “network” of individuals attending a recent family event using the RING task.FindingsAll participants successfully generated visual representations of the relationships between people attending a remembered social event. The groups or networks represented in the RING task output diagrams also reflected effective use of the software functionality with respect to “describing” the nature of the relationships between individuals.Practical implicationsThe authors succeeded in establishing the usability of the RING task software for reporting detailed information about groups of individuals and the relationships between those individuals in a visual format. A number of important limitations and issues for future research to consider are examined.Originality/valueThe RING task is an innovative development to support the elicitation of targeted information about networks of people and the relationships between them. Given the importance of understanding human networks in order to disrupt criminal activity, the RING task may contribute to intelligence gathering and the investigation of organised crime gangs and terrorist cells and networks.

Fighting Against Organized Crime With the Use of Agent Provocateur. The Experience of Slovak Republic. Outline of Issues

In subject literature devoted to police formations in various countries, we can find a lot of terms describing essentially the same institution concerning the police officer’s secret actions — “undercover”, the so called “police agent”. In the legal and penal order of many countries the terminology concerning the police agent’s institution has not been standardized until now, no single term covering this issue has been elaborated so far. The most frequent terms that may be encountered are: “secret investigative agent“, “secret police officer“, “undercover agent“, “covert“ or “secret agent“. Not only are we dealing with a situation in which in practice there is no one international and universal term describing this issue, but also in majority of European countries there are various determinants and criteria enabling the practical use of this “tool, designated for the fight against criminality. The factors that affect it include, for example: the implications provided to law enforcement authorities by domestic and international activities of organized crimes which, in turn, forces us to identify and define emerging threats and to modify and adjust practical actions concerning the police, prosecutor’s office and courts in their fight with this specific kind of criminal activity. For this reason, we may be able to find various doctrines concerning the procedure of using the institution of the police agent’ in the fight against criminality all over the world. The article has been prepared as part of theresearch project called “Understand the Dimensions of Organized Crime and Terrorist Networks for Developing Effective and Efficient Security Solutions for First-line-practitioners and Professionals” (Project: TAKEDOWN, H2020-FCT-2015, No.: 700688).