By Rowan Scarborough – The Washington Times – Wednesday, June 29, 2016
The Islamic State is steering followers to a “dark web” mafia site that offers murder and other mayhem for hire at a price of thousands of dollars in Bitcoins, the online currency.
The problem for the world’s most vicious terrorist army is that hackers in recent weeks have exposed the “Besa Mafia” destination as an elaborate fraud. It is likely run not by the real-life Besa Albania Mafia and its criminal networks in Europe and the United States, but by a guy living in Romania.
This means the Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS, is sending its followers on a money-wasting venture that is not likely to get anybody killed.
The Islamic State’s endorsement of the Besa Mafia site was discovered by the Middle East Media Research Institute.MEMRI, which monitors jihadi traffic, found Islamic State’s June 14 message on the channel Cyber Kahilafah, which is carried on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
Telegram is its own story. Invented by an exiled Russian technocrat as a way for dissidents to escape the wrath of Vladimir Putin, Telegram has become the go-to platform for jihadis’ planning and commanding terrorist attacks, according to its detractors.
The Besa Mafia location is one of the more intriguing stops on the mysterious dark web. Users can reach this sinister-sounding world anonymously via special browsers, such as The Onion Router, or TOR, that do not leave an IP address — no electronic fingerprints.
Read Full Article – http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/29/isis-duped-by-besa-mafia-dark-web-site-offering-mu/
Herald Sun Insight Editor Keith Moor’s fifth true crime book, Busted, is being released by Penguin next week.
It reveals the inside story of the world’s biggest ecstasy haul and how the Australian Calabrian mafia nearly got away with it.
This is an extract from it.
AS police involved in the world’s biggest ecstasy bust waited for the order to kick down the door they were as confident as they could be that those occupying the Carlton apartment would be asleep.
Those about to execute the raid had the element of surprise in their favour so meeting resistance was much less likely, which further boosted their confidence.
And they were aware from a major surveillance operation the day before that the five people inside had only been in bed for a few hours after hitting the bottle hard the previous night.
But Australian Federal Police bosses — who had had been waiting for more than a year to arrest those responsible for importing 4.4 tonnes of ecstasy into Melbourne — didn’t want to risk any of the suspects getting away, or their agents being harmed, so they brought in the big guns for the pre-dawn operation.
The apartment the AFP’s elite Operations Response Group (ORG) was preparing to raid was rented by Australian Calabrian Mafia boss Pasquale Barbaro for his Melbourne mistress, Sharon Ropa.
While Barbaro’s home was his mansion in Griffith, New South Wales, he spent a lot of time shacked up with Ropa in Victoria — unbeknown to his dutiful Italian wife and four children.
Heavily armed AFP agents threw in flash grenades, which set off loud bangs and flashes of light to mimic a hail of bullets, as they smashed their way into the Little Palmerston Street unit through the front and back doors about 4am — which must have done wonders for the hangovers those inside the flat were suffering after attending a funeral and the inevitable wake the night before.
One funeral goer, Aldo Taddeo, no doubt still regrets deciding to spend the night at Barbaro and Ropa’s place after the wake; he wasn’t wanted by police and no charges were laid against him.
Not only did he get the shock of his life when the flash grenades went off, but he got another form of shock when he struggled with police and was zapped with a stun gun to stop him wrestling with one of the AFP agents.
Another of those arrested in the love nest that day, Severino Scarponi, was so scared by the dramatic entrance of the AFP agents that he literally shat himself — a bad start to what became a very crap day for him.
Barbaro’s cousin Pasquale Sergi, who came down from Griffith for the Melbourne funeral, was also arrested during that early morning raid.
He tried to hide in a bedroom cupboard, which, strangely enough, didn’t fool the AFP agents responsible for searching and securing the premises.
Ropa was naked in bed with Barbaro in the master bedroom when AFP agents burst in. The shocked couple were ordered to lie on the floor.
Police raided Barbaro’s Griffith mansion at the same time as they were smashing their way into his love nest.
Ever tactful, officers who spoke to Barbaro’s wife in Griffith that day didn’t mention the naked circumstances of her husband’s arrest in Carlton.
The AFP agents who arrested Barbaro were surprised at how unflappable and calm he remained. Despite being dragged out of bed and his whole world crumbling around him, Barbaro even found time to flirt outrageously with one of the female AFP agents.
It’s difficult to imagine that little old Melbourne is where the world’s biggest ecstasy haul was made, but it’s true.
It’s also difficult to imagine there are still people in Australia who doubt the existence of the Calabrian Mafia here — but that’s true too.
I have had access to several confidential reports prepared by Australian and Italian law-enforcement agencies, ASIO spies and US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents that should convince even the most ardent of doubters that the Calabrian Mafia is a major organised crime player in Australia.
Those documents have never been released, but their contents are revealed in Busted and they paint a graphic picture of the history of the Calabrian Mafia in Australia.
Calabria is in the toe of southern Italy and is the world headquarters of the Italian organised crime gang, ’Ndrangheta.
’Ndrangheta is known by some Italians as L’Onorata Societa (the Honoured Society) or La Famiglia (The Family).
It is simply called the Mafia by most in Australia, or the Calabrian Mafia to differentiate it from the traditional Sicilian Mafia.
’Ndrangheta eclipsed the Sicilian Mafia in the late 1990s to become the most powerful crime syndicate in Italy.
The Calabrian Mafia has a tight clan structure, often involving members marrying relations and sons taking over from ageing fathers to ‘keep it in the family’, which has made it difficult for law enforcement to penetrate.
The secret society has cells all over the world and has had a strong presence in Australia since at least the 1930s.
It is particularly prevalent in Melbourne, Mildura and Shepparton in Victoria, Griffith and Sydney in New South Wales, and Adelaide and Canberra.
It has been responsible for growing and distributing much of Australia’s marijuana for decades. It also got involved in heroin importations in 1979, through now-dead crime boss Robert Trimbole, and is known to have been involved in massive cocaine and ecstasy importations into Australia since at least 2000.
Just as it is important to have knowledge of the Calabrian Mafia to better understand the inside story of the world’s biggest ecstasy bust, it is equally important to know the backgrounds of the main players charged over the 4.4-tonne shipment.
Those players include Barbaro, Ropa, Saverio Zirilli, Rob Karam, John William, Samuel Higgs and Francesco Madafferi.
Easily the biggest of those players — and the undoubted leader of the gang responsible for importing tonnes of drugs into Australia — was Barbaro.
By the time of his 2008 arrest over the world’s biggest ecstasy bust, Barbaro was a senior Calabrian Mafia boss of international standing in the worldwide Italian secret society, and one of the biggest drug dealers Australia has ever produced.
It was Barbaro, through his senior role in the Calabrian Mafia, who had the international connections to give him access to tonnes of drugs through the Belgium-based Aquino Calabrian Mafia syndicate.
Barbaro was in regular contact with senior members of at least three of the world’s biggest international drug smuggling syndicates.
One of Barbaro’s contacts was an English criminal based in Asia who had strong connections to Chinese triad gangs; another was a Belgium-based Calabrian Mafia syndicate responsible for shipping tonnes of cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs around the world; and a third was a syndicate that specialised in making the world’s best-quality ecstasy in super labs near the Belgium — Netherlands border.
Each of the international syndicates also had something other than large scale drug dealing in common with Barbaro: a propensity to threaten and use violence.
Senior players in each of the three gangs treated Barbaro with incredible respect, a clear indication the international syndicate members considered Barbaro to be a major player on the world drug smuggling stage.
Full Article – http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/true-crime-scene/worlds-biggest-ecstasy-haul-and-the-australian-calabrian-mafia-in-keith-moors-new-book-busted/news-story/2d9bc42c77fad464d2e9c38b4d11750d
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A joint operation by Argentine and Chinese authorities rounded up dozens of suspects with alleged ties to the “Chinese Mafia,” a move that officials described as an important blow against the criminal organization inArgentina.
In a June 13 press release, the Argentine Security Ministry announced the detention of 40 suspects in “Operation Dragon’s Head,” which was carried out by the Federal Police with the support of the Chinese police and the Chinese embassy in Argentina.
Clarín reported that 34 of the 40 suspects were undocumented Chinese immigrants. The Security Ministry said that Peruvians, Bolivians and Argentineans also belonged to the crime group. Thirty-one of those arrested have been released from custody, though they are still under investigation.
The suspects are accused of crimes that include extortion and violation of weapons and drugs laws. The Security Ministry said the operation resulted in the confiscation of 14 firearms, four vehicles, several thousand dollars in cash, and unspecified quantities of drugs and cell phones, along with computers and accounting records.
Local media reports identified the targeted organization by the name “Pixiu,” which refers to a mythical “fortune beast” from Chinese folklore. A police source described the Pixiu group to La Nación as “the biggest, most important and most violent Chinese mafia.”
Security Secretary Eugenio Burazco said the group’s leader, identified by Infobae as A Di, “has a history, and his father is the head of the mafia in China.”
According to Infobae, the Pixiu used a trade organization purporting to represent Chinese businesses in Buenos Aires province as a cover for the group’s illegal activities, which focused heavily on extorting local Chinese businesses.
The news outlet reported that the Pixiu demanded an initial fee of $50,000 from businesses seeking the group’s “protection,” and charged each business a recurring fee of about $3,600 per month. The total amount of money the group earned from its illegal activities remains unclear.
Those who refuse or fail to pay extortion fees are often targeted for violent reprisal. A recent government report linked Chinese organized crime groups to at least 37 attacks against owners and employees of Chinese businesses in Buenos Aires since 2009.
InSight Crime Analysis
Argentine officials hailed the arrest of dozens of suspects and the seizure of records related the Pixiu’s illicit business as an important blow against the group. This may be true, but according to a 2014 report, several other powerful “Chinese mafia” groups operate in Argentina, and there are several factors that complicate efforts to combat them.
Linguistic and cultural barriers can make it difficult for Argentine authorities to investigate Chinese organized crime activities. For Operation Dragon’s Head, Infobae reported, the Argentine police had to bring on a police officer from the Chinese embassy to work the case undercover. Also, Chinese immigrants — especially those without regularized migration status — are often reluctant to cooperate with local authorities on investigations of fellow Chinese.
Full Article – http://www.insightcrime.org/news-briefs/argentina-targets-chinese-mafia-with-operation-dragons-head
It may not make for a great Martin Scorsese film, but online ad fraud is growing into one of the biggest organized crime businesses in the world.
That’s according to a new report from the World Federation of Advertisers, which estimates that within the next decade, fake Internet traffic schemes will become the second-largestmarket for criminal organizations behind cocaine and opiate trafficking.
The WFA, an international marketing trade group, arrived at that projection by estimating the current pace of growth in the online ad industry and extrapolating it out over the next 10 years, assuming an accelerating rate of spending on digital media.
The stat puts in stark relief a growing problem: A huge number of online ads — more than half of them, by some accounts — never reach actual humans. Many fall victim to technical display problems, while others are viewed by networks of automated bots designed to mimic human behavior.
Even at conservative projections, the report claims, the total cost of fraud, if unchecked, could exceed $50 billion by 2025 — or one-tenth of the $500 billion the report loftily predicts the global digital ad market will be worth by then.
Researchers then compared that number to United Nations and FBI estimates of the size of other global criminal markets like human trafficking, firearms sales and natural resource smuggling.
According to the report, organized crime members and other criminals are attracted to ad fraud because it offers the prospect of higher payouts than many other criminal pursuits, at a lower risk and with relatively little effort.
The report also claims that law enforcement is not technologically equipped enough to regulate online ad space.
The WFA researchers bank their study on the assumption that ad fraud will most likely grow — either in the number of scammers or the efficiency of their technology — along with spending in digital media.
If that sounds like a lot of guesswork, it’s because illegal businesses don’t exactly keep public financial records, and the scope of the vast ad fraud underbelly is particularly nebulous.
The most widely cited authority on the matter is an annual report published by the Association of National Advertisers, which forecasts a $7.2 billion loss to fraud in 2016 — or about 5% of total spending.
But the WFA claims that the ANA report, which only covers select blue-chip American brands, may have lowballed the threat. Its own research cites various anti-fraud studies that peg the impact at anywhere between 2% and an eyebrow-raising 98%.
More of the studies (from a group of well-established publishers) come in on the lower end of that range, but the true extent of the problem is neither clear-cut nor universally agreed upon.
Part of that murk has to do with the difficulty of tracking the sources of fraud — the assortment of mobsters, former bank robbers, hackers and Russian millionaires in charge of the multibillion-dollar racket.
But cyber criminals aren’t the only ones with an interest in covering their tracks. Actors at every level of the digital ad assembly line, from publishers to agencies to advertising networks — basically everyone except for the brands actually paying for the ads — have at least some incentive to keep the problem in the dark.
“Nobody works alone in this sphere. They’re all sort of riding on each other’s backs,” says Jeremy Goldman, an attorney who specializes in technology and digital media law. “Nobody wants to take the fall and say they were the ones who hired the bad apple. It’s better to hide or push it under the rug.”
Full article – http://mashable.com/2016/06/09/ad-fraud-organized-crime/#0IBbBnRNGOqf
