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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Argentina Targets “Chinese Mafia” with Operation “Dragon’s Head”

Written by Mike LaSusa 

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

Blog, Business Law, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Ad fraud could become the second biggest organized crime enterprise behind the drug trade

by Patrick Kulp

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

Blog, Criminal, Immigration, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

The Italian Mafia is Funding Terrorism By Buying Smuggled Hash From ISIS

Italian prosecutor claims that the Italian Mafia is buying hash that was smuggled by ISIS through Libya.

The Italian Mafia and an Islamic terrorist group meet up at a hash-smuggling operation… It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but unfortunately, according to the anti-Mafia and antiterrorism prosecutor, Franco Roberti, it’s the grim reality in the country of Italy. The Italian prosecutor claims that hash is being purchased by the Italian Mafia from Libya, which is being smuggled in by the Islamic terrorist sect ISIS.

The North African hash is being used a major source of income for the Islamic State, and the Italian Mafia is apparently a loyal customer. It’s quite profitable for the Mafia as well, which earns about 32 billion euros ($36.10 billion) a year through their illegal drug trades, a sizable portion of which is made up of hash and cannabis. It’s seems reasonable for Roberti to assume that ISIS is heavily involved. According to Ahmad Moussalli, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut, territorial expansion by ISIS on the Syrian border has put them in control of a vast amount of cannabis fields.

Instead of trying to crack down even more viciously on Italy’s use of cannabis and hash, which the government already spends millions on combating, Roberti has come forth with a much more level-headed approach. Instead, the prosecutor believes that the time has come for Italy to rescind their harsh marijuana laws, citing that decriminalization would negatively affect both the Mafia and the Islamic State.

The decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help land a potentially critical blow to the funding of ISIS, which according to a recently published IHS Conflict Monitor report, has already dropped from $80 million in monthly revenue to $56 million since the middle of 2015. According to Roberti, a major portion of the terrorist cell’s revenue comes from drug trafficking, and decriminalization of marijuana in Italy could help put a major dent in that.

To Roberti, it makes sense to persecute the Mafia and the Islamic State in a similar manner, seeing as that Italian Mafia families, particularly in the south, have been long proponents of terrorist activities. The Mafia and ISIS could be more intertwined than it would seem at first glance, as both are heavily dependent on drug trafficking as a revenue source. But does Roberti have a sound argument for decriminalization? I would have to argue that he does.

“We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking. On the contrary, it’s increasing,” said Roberti. “Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?”

Full Article – https://www.merryjane.com/news/the-italian-mafia-is-funding-terrorism-by-buying-smuggled-hash-from-isis

Blog, Civil Rights, Legal News, Supreme Court

Prospective Jurors Refuse to Serve Under Aaron Persky, the Judge in Brock Turner Case

Stassa Edwards

The East Bay Times reports that as many as ten prospective jurors have refused to serve under Aaron Persky, the judge who presided over Brock Turner’s sentencing, in a new, unrelated case.

According to the paper, one prospective juror stood up and said, “I can’t believe what you did,” referring to the six-month sentence Persky gave Turner after the ex-Stanford student was convicted of three felonies, including assault with the intent to commit rape. Another juror said, “I’m sorry, I can’t be here.” Persky’s new case is a misdemeanor stolen property case.

Each time a juror refused, Persky said “I understand,” thanked the juror and dismissed them.

Since Persky gave Turner his sentence (which will likely be reduced to three months) last week, there have been calls for his resignation and removal. Earlier this week, the Daily Dot covered two petitions for Persky’s recall, including one by Stanford professor Michele Dauber. On Sunday, Dauber shared a letterwritten by Dan Turner, Brock’s father, advocating for leniency. In that letter, Dan Turner described his son’s sexual assault on an unconscious woman as “20 minutes of action.”

Persky, who was recently reelected to the bench after running unopposed, has a history of presiding over controversial rape cases. In 2011, Persky presided over the civil case of an underage victim who alleged that she was gang-raped by multiple members of the De Anza College basketball team in 2007.

That case has shades of the Turner case: an unconscious victim, college athletes, and bystanders who intervened to end the assault, all on a college campus. Though none of the alleged De Anza rapists were ever prosecuted (a deeply controversial decision made by Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office), the victim sought recourse in civil court, suing for $7.5 million in damages.

During that civil trial, Persky made a controversial evidentiary ruling whichallowed the jury to view seven photographs of the alleged victim “partying about a year or so after the alleged gang rape. In the photos, she is scantily clad, wearing a garter belt and what appear to be fishnet stockings.” Lawyers for the defendant claimed that the photographs were a “direct contradiction” of the alleged victim’s claims. The victim, inevitably, lost the lawsuit.

Though the De Anza case didn’t go “viral,” it speaks, perhaps, to the contradictions of a judge who campaigned as tough on sexual predators and a vocal advocate of victims.

From – http://jezebel.com/prospective-jurors-refuse-to-serve-under-aaron-persky-1781618871