Australian Federal Police (AFP) warned on Wednesday of scammers pretending to be police officers when calling or sending emails to potential victims, claiming their bank accounts were tampered with and then tricking them into sending money to special bank accounts they have set up.

After a three-years-long international investigation, Colombian police arrested six people allegedly involved in the human trafficking and sexual exploitation of Colombian and Venezuelan women, according to an Interpol statement.

The son of Mozambique’s ex-president and 18 bankers and government officials have faced the judge on Monday in a long-awaited trial over the so-called “tuna bonds” scandal involving US$2 billion worth of secret bank loans and bonds that plunged the nation into a financial crisis.

Mexican authorities rearrested on Monday one of the seven brothers who ran the notorious Mexican Arellano Felix cartel that used to move tons of drugs from Mexico and Colombia to the United States.

Italian Mafia groups, particularly ‘Ndrangheta, the country’s strongest and most powerful criminal syndicate, are growing more and more attuned to modern tools like cryptocurrency and the deep web, the Italian Anti-Mafia Directorate (DIA) said in their latest report covering the first half of 2020. 

An international media watchdog urged Myanmar authorities on Monday to promptly free two journalists working for foreign media and dismiss all charges against them.

The U.S. and the U.K. levied sanctions on Friday against nine Russian individuals and two entities, in response to the poisoning of anti-corruption activist and Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.

A suspected mafia boss and one of Italy’s most wanted fugitives since 2016 was arrested in Dubai after spending years on the run from the Italian police, authorities announced last week.

Financial institutions around the world paid in the first two quarters of this year more than US$937 million in penalties for breaching anti-money laundering procedures, the Dublin-based fintech company Fenergo reported.

Religious proscriptions against internet usage in Turkmenistan, Spain’s drug-smuggling grandmother, and beef between a trio of Swedish rappers that saw one of them kidnapped -- welcome to OCCRP’s oddities section, your irregular roundup of all things weird and criminal.