Time Digital: Crime Online

[Steve Schear]

The winter edition of this bi-monthly has an amusing article, pg 54-58,
about how orgnaized crime is getting more organized with modern technology.
Cases in point:

* A Queens, NY bookie operation doing $65 million per year busted by taping
the their faxes and decoding their hard drives at least one of which had a
menchman's mother's name as the password.

* Cali cartels using up-to-date data management, encryption and SIGINT
methods.  A CIA quote, "...the level of sophistication of the Cali cartel
was about at the level of the KGB when the Soviet Union fell apart."

* According to the article the cost of 'scrubbing' money costs about $0.20
on the dollar in volume.

* The European Union Bank is mentioned as a possible safe haven for laundering.

Among the criminal's tools of the trade, cell phones, scanners and PGP.

-- Steve