The cyber world is constantly evolving, and criminal groups in Latin America are adapting their modus operandi to make the most of it.

Technological innovations brought about by the Internet era have influenced various criminal economies, from drug trafficking to money laundering. In Mexico, producers of synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl and methamphetamine, use the open and dark web to acquire precursors and highly regulated chemicals through sellers who can ensure successful shipments to almost anywhere. Latin American criminal groups, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG), frequently use cryptocurrencies to launder drug money, while groups such as Brazil’s First Capital Command (Primeiro Comando da Capital – PCC) have increasingly been linked to online scams and cyber crime.

InSight Crime spoke to Antonio Nicaso, a professor at Queen’s University in Canada and director of the Magna Grecia Foundation’s Cybercrime Research Center in Italy, about how organized crime has been transformed by technological advances in the age of the internet.

InSight Crime (IC): What have been the main changes that organized crime has faced in the Internet era?

Antonio Nicaso (AN): Criminal groups’ DNA is changing and adapting to a constantly evolving world. In recent years, many investigations have highlighted the significant shift in the social capital of mafias, the network of external relationships that has always served as a backbone of mafia power. Now, alongside the traditional figures such as lawyers, chartered accountants, and brokers, new powers have emerged.

Our life is now immersed in the digital dimension, and we shouldn’t think that criminals are any different — they do different things than us, but, like us, they live in an interconnected world. And so, they use the internet like us. But of course having money, they can hire, for example, Artificial Intelligence (AI) engineers and ask them to build an encrypted system to exchange messages, and at the same time, they can hire people and buy special computers for mining cryptocurrencies to invest in the so-called dark web and to launder money.

SEE ALSO: 4 Ways AI Is Shaping Organized Crime in Latin America

Their approach is no longer an analog one, but a combination of analog and virtual. Because of this, when we are thinking about criminal organizations today, we have to start thinking from a new perspective.

It is not an evolution that should scare us, but it is a factor that we have to deal with, and we have to act quickly — you can’t keep thinking of cyber crime and organized crime as two different entities.

IC: How have Latin American criminal organizations adapted to the world of cybercrime?

AN: In 2018, during an investigation conducted in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and Italy, authorities intercepted a conversation where a Colombian broker was about to pay for a shipment of cocaine to Brazilian drug traffickers in bitcoins. But the deal fell through because, at that time, the Brazilian drug traffickers, who were linked to the PCC, did not know how to handle this type of transaction. A few years later, that same organization now fully understood the importance of cryptocurrencies and the opportunities they offer. Now, there have been several cases of people with links to the PCC involved in huge investments in cryptocurrencies. The Red Command (Comando Vermelho – CV) in Rio de Janeiro, is also heavily involved.

SEE ALSO: Technology Is Increasingly at the Heart of Criminal Operations in Brazil

IC: How has the ethos of criminal groups changed with the internet?

AN: Historically, criminal organizations have always been great communicators. They are now communicating through a new system.

Social media, for example, is just another way to control territory — it’s an extension of physical territory. It’s a way to build a brand, to convince people that their philosophy is the winning one: “Look at me, I can afford all of these things. If you want to be like me, join me.”

It is also a way of constructing a new narrative. For example, the idea that the state is against them, that they have to fight marginalization — these are all messages that are conveyed through the internet to build a new sense of identity, a new sense of belonging.

IC: What are the main security challenges in tackling these dynamics?

AN: There is still a technological gap in law enforcement. For example, in Italy and in many other countries, they can only use hackers for cybersecurity, while in other countries, they can use hackers to hack communication systems used by criminals.  

SEE ALSO: Borders Are No Barrier to Booming Cyber Crime, and Authorities Must Adapt

We need to implement a new strategy, a global strategy to deal with an organized crime that is ever more hybrid, that is working online and offline. We need to use artificial intelligence, we need to use algorithms to fight and to challenge this, to cope with it. If we continue to fight criminal organizations with the traditional systems, we won’t get anywhere. We will remain one or two steps behind the criminal groups.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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