Russian Mob Tops in Cybercrime?

Published: 09 December 2008

By Beth

The Russian mob is the world’s largest and most organized group in the world when it comes to cybercrime, an American hacker-cum-computer security expert told the Times of India last week. 

Russian and Chinese hackers commit the worst cybercrimes but have differing motivations, said Chris Goggans, who has worked with US federal law enforcement on computer crimes.

“While most of the cyber crimes from Russia are financial in nature (stealing credit card number, bank account details), crimes emanating from China are related to theft of intellectual property, government information and military data," Goggans said.

Amsterdam Crackdown to Curb OC

Amsterdam’s permissive codes on soft drugs and prostitution have not changed, but city authorities are shutting down coffee shops and brothels to curb organized crime, officials told UPI.

Deputy mayor Lodewijk Asscher said that money laundering, extortion and human trafficking are just a few of the evils lurking just under Amsterdam’s thin veneer of stoned tourists and scantily clad women in the windows of the red-light district. The city will turn out the lights on about half of the brothels here that use the front-window concept to lure customers; about half of the city’s 76 marijuana-selling coffee shops will also be shuttered.

“We can still have sex and drugs but in a way that shows the city is in control,” Asscher said.

Liechtenstein Tax Pact with US

Liechtenstein is slightly changing its ultra-secretive banking rules to allow US officials to chase tax evaders in some cases, Reuters reported Monday. By erasing the distinction between tax fraud and tax evasion, US officials no longer have to prove deliberate tax fraud before the principality’s banks may open up to help in certain cases of US tax evasion. But that does not guarantee that the principality’s banks are being used by other, more sinister criminal elements.

Liechtenstein assures the public that its secrecy laws, dovetailed with rules on due diligence passed earlier this decade, now mean that the principality is an “international pioneer” in that respect. Other experts say otherwise. US Treasury undersecretary Jimmy Gurule told officials here in October 2002 that Islamic terrorists may have been taking advantage of Liechtenstein’s lack of transparency to finance operations. UN Office on Drugs and Crime head Antonio Maria Costa urged Liechtenstein earlier this year to “enhance its financial integrity.” Liechtenstein also remains one of only three countries on the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s blacklist of “uncooperative tax havens.”

While Liechtenstein authorities promised reforms after a German tax evasion scandal broke in February, not much has been done. And a loophole in the US agreement – Liechtenstein will only release banking information for clients who are already being investigated or prosecuted for tax evasion in the US – doesn’t show the world much promise that the principality will allow the US to chase many tax evaders, never mind allowing other countries to follow gangsters’ money trails. 

Italy: Mafia Sons Beg for Peace

Two sons of the jailed Sicilian mob boss of all bosses begged to be left alone last week, in interviews carried in two major Italian papers, reported the Guardian.

Angelo and Francesco Provenzano, the sons of Bernardo Provenzano, complained bitterly of police surveillance and media intrusion, saying they had no private life.

"We have lived, and continue to live, as if we were Big Brother contestants," said Angelo Provenzano. "We have been actors in the biggest reality show on Cosa Nostra."

Last month, the youngest son of Salvatore “The Beast” Riina asked judges to let him leave Corleone so that he isn’t “constantly crushed by the weight of his father’s name. Both Riina and Provenzano are serving life sentences in Italian prisons for numerous mob-related homicides.

Police in Sicily last week also continued seizing the assets of mob families, with a seizure of €250 million worth of companies, properties and bank accounts from the family of a deceased Palermo businessman. Police are investigating 15 people connected with Paolo Sgroi, who died in October. He was the manager of the Sisa supermarket chain.

Friday's police swoop followed tapped phone conversations between suspects which discussed Mafia interests in the Sisa supermarket chain. A probe by Italian tax police identified a numbered Swiss bank account belonging to Sgroi into which large sums of money were being paid from a bank in the Palermo suburb of Carini.

In Camorra news, the anti-mob film Gomorra last week won the best film award at the 21st annual European Film Awards. The European answer to the Academy Awards was held this year in Copenhagen. Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, who wrote the novel on which the film was based, could not attend because he’s in hiding from the mob.

Also under Italian police protection is Maria Rosaria Capacchione, a 20-year veteran of reporting on the Naples-based Camorra. Last week she was promoting her new non-fiction account, The Gold of the Camorra, which details the mob group’s business operations. Capacchione isn’t interested in being pitted against the more successful Saviano. “All books contribute to the understanding of the Camorra,” she said.

Israeli Mayor Faces Probe

Israeli police last week interrogated another politician besides beleaguered caretaker prime minister Ehud Olmert.  Ramat Gan mayor Zvi Bar faced police questioning over allegations of bribery and other offenses related to real estate transactions. Bar is also suspected of fraud. As for Olmert, prosecutors announced last week that he was off the hook in a bank privatization investigation, but he faces several other investigations that had led him to resign in September.

Prosecutors had suspected Olmert of trying to rig the 2005 sale of Bank Leumi in favor of two associates. He was finance minister at the time.

But State Prosecutor Moshe Lador said Thursday Olmert played only a small role in the affair and any conflict of interest was limited. Police already recommended last month that the case be dropped.

In Israeli organized crime news, Israelis are irate over the collateral damage involved in various recent mob hits, reported Bloomberg. Besides the botched gangland shooting that left an innocent mother of two dead on an Israeli beach in July, the recent car-bombing murder of alleged mobster Ya’akov Alperon last month also left several bystanders hurt. And local public officials have been threatened. Some Israelis are starting to say it’s enough. The widower of the woman killed in July advocates sending Shin Bet, Israel’s heavy duty domestic security agency, after mobsters rather than solely against Palestinian terrorists. That’s highly unlikely. But Knesset member Ophir Pines-Paz, a vocal critic of organized crime in Israel, told a hearing last month that the public has no confidence in the police when it comes to fighting organized crime.

“It’s only a matter of time before the next act of violence between these gangsters, and innocent bystanders could again be the victims,” said Pines-Paz.

Mexico: 2008 Crime Deaths Pass 5,000

Mexico’s deaths related to organized crime and drug trafficking in 2008 passed the somber tally of 5,000 last week, Mexican newspaper El Universal reported in a bit picked up by Bloomberg. 

A total of 5,031 people have died this year from violence stemming from organized crime, including 35 in the past 24 hours, the newspaper said. Deaths occurred at an average of one per hour during the past 42 days. The first thousand deaths of the year were tallied in 113 days, while the last thousand happened in only 42 days, El Universal said.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said earlier this month that Mexico’s attempts to fight drug traffickers will come to naught unless Mexico’s biggest customer, the United States, does more to reduce the demand for marijuana, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Instead, the US moved forward on giving a $197 million crime-fighting package to Mexico as part of the Merida initiative, a security cooperation and assistance package for Mexico and countries in Central America.