INFOSOURCES™ Empowered in Southeastern Sets up in Prague (Page 7) READ TODAY WHAT YOU WILL ASK TOMORROW Europe (Page 5-6) CRIME
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Issue No.3 | www.infosources.info August 2018 Regional organized crime Balkan Organized Crime INFOSOURCES™ empowered in Southeastern Sets up in Prague (page 7) READ TODAY WHAT YOU WILL ASK TOMORROW Europe (page 5-6) CRIME The biggest 5 organized crime groups in the world Organized crime www.picturesdotnews.com Cybercrime is grabbing the headlines these days, ver from its effects, rather than what thieves reached $34 billion annually. but the largest criminal gangs are still making earn from their crimes. When you add the market for other illicit drugs most of their money from drugs, sex, and extor- Compare that to estimates of pure revenue and revenue generators like human trafficking tion. from other forms of organized crime like the and extortion, it becomes clear that organized It’s tough to go even a few months without seeing drug trade and human trafficking: the -Or crime is still making most of its money from its the effects of organized crime on the economy and ganization of American States estimates that legacy businesses, despite the fact that criminals everyday life. The most salient example these days is the rash of thefts of credit card data from big- the revenue for cocaine sales in the U.S. has are always looking for new ways to make a buck. name retail chains like Home Depot and Target. While these threats are headline-grabbing and particularly frightening because e-commerce is a relatively new phenomenon and businesses and consumers aren’t totally sure how to protect them- selves from hackers, it’s still a drop in the bucket in terms of overall organized crime earnings. A 2013 survey from Javelin Strategy and Research estimates that the annual total loss to Americans due to identity theft was roughly $20 billion. But much of those costs comes from efforts to prevent identity theft or reco- So, who are the biggest organized crime gangs like Chinese Triads, which are a around the world and how do they make their loose conglomeration of crimi- money? Organized crime revenues are very nals bonded together mostly by difficult to estimate, as criminals often spend a familial relations, significant amount of time trying to hide what Yakuza are bound together by they make. “elaborate hierarchies,” and Also, “organized crime” is a loosely defined members, once initiated, must concept. Anything from a vast drug smug- subvert all other allegiances gling ring to a handful of car thieves can be in favor of the Yakuza. Even classified as organized crime groups, and the with the Japanese government cohesiveness of organized crime organizations cracking down on Yakuza in national Crime estimated that mafia activities around the world varies widely. recent years, this centralized structure has generate revenue of $33 billion dollars, mostly made it easy to attribute a massive amount of divided among Italy’s four major mafia gangs. Some groups, like Japan’s Yakuza, are highly revenue to this single gang. Camorra is the most successful of these organized and hierarchical, allowing econo- 2. Solntsevskaya Bratva groups, raking in an estimated $4.9 billion per mists and crime fighters in Japan to attribute year on everything from “sexual exploitation, much higher revenue totals to Yakuza groups Revenue: $8.5 billion firearms trafficking, drugs, counterfeiting, than others around the world. Here are the Russian mafia groups sit on the other side of gambling … usury and extortion,” according top five criminal gangs, ranked by revenue the organizational spectrum from Yakuza. to the report. And Camorra has been at it a estimates: Their structure, according to Frederico Vare- long time. se, a professor of criminology at the Univer- Based in Naples, the group’s history dates back sity of Oxford and an expert on international to the 19th century, when it was formed ini- organized crime, is highly decentralized. tially as a prison gang. As members were re- The group is composed of 10 separate qua- leased, the group flourished during the bloody si-autonomous “brigades” that operate more political struggles in Italy during the 1800s by or less independently of each other. The group offering protection services and as a force for does pool its resources, however, and the political organization among Italy’s poor. money is overseen by a 12-person council that “meets regularly in different parts of the wor- 4. Ndrangheta ld, often disguising their meetings as festive Revenue: $4.5 billion occasions,” Varesi says. Based in the Calabria region of Italy, the ‘Nda- It’s estimated that the group claims upwards rangheta is the country’s second largest mafia of 9,000 members, and that it’s bread and but- group by revenue. While it is involved in ter is the drug trade and human trafficking. 1. Yamaguchi Gumi many of the same illicit activities as Camorra, Russian organized crime in general is heavily ‘Ndrangheta has made its name for itself by Revenue: $80 billion involved in the heroin trade that originates building international ties with South Ame- The largest known gang in the world is called in Afghanistan: it’s estimated that Russia rican cocaine dealers, and it controls much the Yamaguchi Gumi, one of several groups consumes about 12% of the world’s heroin, of the transatlantic drug market that feeds collectively referred to in Japan as “Yakuza,” a while it contains just 0.5% of the world’s Europe. term that is roughly equivalent to the Ameri- population. It has also been expanding its operations in can use of “mafia.” 3. Camorra the U.S. and has helped prop up the Gambino The Yamaguchi Gumi make more money and Bonnano crime families in New York. from drug trafficking than any other source, Revenue: $4.9 billion according to Hiromitsu Suganuma, Japan’s While the Italian-American mafia has been former national police chief. The next two severely weakened in recent decades by law leading sources of revenue are gambling enforcement, the Italian mafia in the old and extortion, followed closely by “dispute country is still running strong. SCAN HERE resolution.” Despite years of efforts from citizens, jour- The Yakuza date back hundreds of years, and nalists, and government officials, the local according to Dennis McCarthy, author of An governments in Italy remain linked to and Economic History of Organized Crime, Yaku- protective of various mafia groups, to the point za groups are among the most centralized where a 2013 study from the Università Catto- in the world. While other East Asian gangs lica and the Joint research Centre on Trans- Mafia Wars: How Italy's Military Police Use Metadata To Track Organized Crime Organized Crime www.picturesdotnews.com THE CARABINIERI, ITALY'S MILITARY from communication data, simply looking at A number of software tools are already POLICE, USED A NEW SOFTWARE patterns and network features.» available to intelligence agencies, law PLATFORM TO ANALYZE THE PHONE Here's how it works: Police feed phone logs enforcement, military, and private RECORDS OF ORGANIZED CRIME they obtain into LogAnalysis; those then get investigators which apply network analysis GROUPS. HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED. mashed up with mug shots, criminal records, to mobile phone metadata for their and other proprietary information from investigations. In the course of their paper, There's a reason why the NSA likes metadata police databases. This information then shapes IBM i2'sCOPLINK and Analyst's Notebook, so much. Metadata-the auxiliary data the Carabinieri's investigations by giving Xanalys's Link Explorer, and Palantir generated by every digital move you make- vital clues about intra-group relationships Government are all cited. The researchers, can track a person's digital life in detail. Now of an organized crime group believed to be however, feel their software offers a specific a team of Italian academics are showing how behind robberies, extortions, and narcotics need. metadata can reveal the structure of organized trafficking. It's important to note that their Ferrara believes that many investigative crime groups with a software tool called paper anonymized all records, and did not platforms law enforcement use are designed LogAnalysis, which combines information identify which organized crime group Italian for counterterrorism and cybercrime first, from mobile phone records with police law enforcement were investigating. with physical crime as a secondary priority. databases. And among LogAnalysis's first It turns out that metadata can tell quite a lot «Our system is focused on the analysis of users is the Carabinieri, the Italian military about the way an organization is set up. Matt communication data related to criminal police. Unger, the chief digital officer of New York events occurring in the physical/offline Emilio Ferrara, a postdoc at Indiana firm K2 Intelligence, explained over the phone world, as opposed to cybercrime,» he says. University, created LogAnalysis with three to Fast Company that «with a good analytics «It has already proved to be an asset in real researchers from the University of Messina platform, cell phone metadata reveals who the investigations related to robberies, murders, in Sicily. Ferrara explains that their platform influencers are. They are the ones who send prostitution, bribery, and drugs trafficking.» «infers, with pretty high confidence, the roles and receive the most communications, and you of individuals involved in criminal activity can also see the ripples they make in turn.» SCAN HERE Mapping the mafia: Italy’s web of criminal gangs explained Organized Crime www.euronews.com from the Sicilian Mafia and can boast a global turnover of 53 billion euros, mainly coming from drug trafficking, an army of approximately 6,000 members globally (other sources put this figure at 60,000) and almost 400 armed groups operating in over 30 countries. In other words, it sits on a pile of cash as high as McDonald's or Deutsche Bank's , worth 3.5% of Italian GDP.