![]() ![]() ![]() ‘Ndragheta, one of the most powerful Italian mob families in Europe, has links with a company, eSurv, that produced spyware that, while created to target criminal suspects and surveil their communications, has been abused to surveil innocent Italians’ encrypted chats, microphones, and cameras, according to Bloomberg.Īnd although the police specified the 106 arrested in this most recent case were working for the Casamonica, Camorra napolitana, Nuvoletta, and Sacra Corona Unita clans, the news comes as Italian Mafia groups are increasingly coalescing and working together on various criminal operations, according to the Italian National Anti-Mafia and Counter-Terrorism Public Prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho. citizens, according to an Italian police alert from the time. In 2015, European law enforcement wrapped up a Sicily-based crime ring with links to la Cosa Nostra that had worked with hackers in Russia, Ukraine, and Romania to steal credit card information, mostly from U.S. This isn’t the first time criminals with links to Italian Mafia crime families have been caught using hacking and conducting credit card schemes. Federico Varese, professor of Criminology at the University of Oxford “In this story, it is notable that there were at least two murders and the use of violence.” Instead there is an important, offline dimension, where people with some cyber expertise meet traditional organized crime, like in this story,” Varese, who has studied and written on organized crime extensively, told The Daily Beast. “There is a common misconception about cybercrime-namely that it happens only online. These kinds of overlaps between cybercrimes and physical law-breaking are more common than one might think, Federico Varese, a professor of criminology at the University of Oxford, told The Daily Beast. In one case, the mobsters kidnapped a woman, held her at gunpoint, took her to an ATM, and forced her to hand over all her money, according to Spanish police. In addition to these more modern electronic crimes, the arrested individuals were also accused of more traditional and heinous crimes, such as kidnapping, assault, coercion, robbery with violence and force, illegal possession of weapons, and two counts of homicides. The recent spate of arrests of individuals in Italy and Spain, however, shows Italian Mafia criminals squarely entering the 21st century of money laundering and organized crime, weaving together tried-and-true tactics of coercive money laundering schemes into the cyber realm. In the raid-which law enforcement officials code-named “Fontana-Almabahia”-Europol and the Italian and Spanish national police forces searched 16 houses, froze 118 bank accounts, and made 106 arrests in all.Īlthough Italian mobsters are the OG organized crime bosses, cybercrime and hacking is traditionally associated with Russian-speaking criminals, Nigerian gangs, or teams working for North Korea’s government. ![]() And they also used SIM-swapping schemes, in which criminals convince phone service providers to transfer victims’ phone numbers to another device to access accounts. The gangsters and accomplices also used “vishing,” or voice phishing, in which criminals trick victims over the phone into coughing up personal information such as passwords or credit card details. “This large criminal network was very well organised in a pyramid structure, which included different specialised areas and roles,” Europol said in a statement earlier this week. After the mobsters received the ill-gotten gains, they laundered the currency through front companies, money mules, and cryptocurrency assets, according to Spanish police. The criminals allegedly coordinated with computer experts to run spearphishing emails that duped victims into sending money to bank accounts. ![]()
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