Russian and Chinese hackers commit the worst cybercrimes but have differing motivations, said Chris Goggans, who has worked with
“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.
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.
While
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
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
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
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.
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,
“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.
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