This book explores how organized crime has adapted and evolved in
sync with ever-expanding technologies to update its popular image
and to conduct its covert operations. It shows how organized crime
operates in dark virtual spaces and how it can now form a dynamic
interactive system with legitimate online spaces, solidifying its
criminal exploits and resources, and making them attractive to a new
generation of computer users. Focusing on Italian Mafias, Russian and
Georgian criminal groups and drug cartels, and Asian crime syndicates
such as Yakuza and Triads, this book aims to describe and explain the
reasons behind the continuity of online and offline crime, taking into
consideration whether or not Internet culture has radically changed
the way we perceive organized crime and if so how, and thus how the
shift in popular imagery that the Internet has brought about affects
its actual illegal activities. We also consider how organized crime has
shifted its locale from the physical to the virtual, how cybercrime has
allowed criminal organizations to adapt and reinvent themselves, and
how the police now use technology against organized crime.