This article asks how extralegal markets survive, adapt, and continue expanding under active state interference, focusing on China’s stablecoin over-the-counter market before and after the 2020 anti-money-laundering crackdown. Drawing on 48 semi-structured interviews, 525 court decisions, and an extensive-form screening game, it examines how dealers manage contractual opportunism and legal risk despite formal prohibitions on fiat-to-crypto exchange. The study finds that campaign-style enforcement did not suppress private governance but reconfigured it. Specifically, platform escrow declined following the crackdown, while reputation systems, offline transactions, and dealer networks became more important for enforcing contracts. It further shows that intensified enforcement induced dealers to adopt a two-tier screening regime based on know-your-customer checks and fund-lockup periods, with risk-based premiums helping separate legitimate from illicit clients. These findings extend private-governance theory from settings of weak state capacity to active state interference and show how actors often implicated in laundering can become de facto regulatory intermediaries through bottom-up self-policing.
This article examines how drug trafficking and illegal gold mining converge in the Amazon and proposes an analytical framework to systematize the phenomenon of criminal convergence. Although investigative reports and institutional diagnoses increasingly describe interactions between illegal mining and drug trafficking in the Amazon, these dynamics remain insufficiently systematized in the academic literature. Drawing on General Systems Theory and ecosystemic approaches to organized crime, the article asks which variables help explain the convergence between illicit markets, criminal actors, and territories. The study also identifies Violent Non-State Actors (VNSAs) simultaneously involved in illegal mining and drug trafficking networks across the Amazon. Methodologically, the study combines a systematic literature review on criminal convergence with content analysis of investigative reports and institutional documents concerning illegal mining and organized crime in the Amazon. The framework is applied to examine how criminal activities, actors, and territories interact within the Amazonian context. The findings suggest that illegal gold mining and drug trafficking operate within the same criminal ecosystem, characterized by shared logistics, territorial control, illicit financial flows, and operational cooperation. The analysis also demonstrates that the convergence surrounding illegal mining extends beyond drug trafficking, incorporating activities such as extortion, arms trafficking, money laundering, violent territorial control, and human trafficking. Rather than representing a simple overlap of illicit markets, the article argues that “narco-mining” functions as a system of criminal convergence. By systematizing the variables that organize these interactions, the article contributes to the study of criminal ecosystems and organized crime in the Amazon.
GLP-1 receptor agonists, including semaglutide and liraglutide, have attracted substantial attention for their efficacy in weight management, with growing use extending beyond traditional diabetes treatment and regulated prescription pathways. Encrypted messaging platforms, particularly Telegram, have become important channels for illicit pharmaceutical trade, enabling the promotion and distribution of medicines outside regulated medical systems. Although research on online drug markets has focused mainly on illegal substances, the circulation of prescription-only medicines remains understudied. This study examines advertisements for GLP-1 receptor agonists in European Telegram-based illicit drug markets. A mixed-methods design was employed, combining automated data collection with quantitative and qualitative analyses of Telegram drug-trading channels. Using a keyword-based dictionary, posts mentioning GLP-1 products were identified and analysed for offer frequency, pricing, and co-occurrence with other substances and the linguistic strategies used to frame and promote them. Template analysis was used to examine the linguistic and marketing strategies employed in GLP-1 advertisements. Among 648,862 messages from four European Telegram drug-trading channels, 2,837 posts (0.43
Illicit firearm markets constitute a significant component of global illicit economies and assume a central role in facilitating violent and organised criminal activities. Despite restrictive legislation across many jurisdictions that aim to limit access to firearms, criminal actors continue to access firearms through a range of channels, particularly via criminal networks and informal social connections. However, little is currently known about the factors that influence the prices of firearms in these illicit contexts. Building on the existing literature and drawing on interviews with 75 prisoners incarcerated across sixteen correctional centres in two Australian states—South Australia and New South Wales—this paper examines the factors that influence the prices of illicit firearms. In doing so, this paper contributes new empirical insights into how illicit firearms prices are structured and negotiated, as well as the social and market forces that influence illicit firearm pricing. Overall, participants’ accounts suggest that illicit firearm prices were affected by a combination of restrictive policy environments, supply and demand dynamics, perceived risks of buying and selling illicit firearms, distinctions between firearms perceived to be “clean” and those associated with previous criminal activity and how these affect pricing, the unique characteristics of specific firearms, and social dynamics including closed social networks and interpersonal trust. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of empirical findings of this paper on policy and practice.
Forced labor on distant-water fishing (DWF) vessels is a serious transnational crime involving grave human rights violations. Despite a growing body of qualitative research documenting abusive practices, existing studies remain fragmented and examine discrete stages of exploitation in isolation. Therefore, based on a synthesis of twenty interview-based qualitative studies for forced labor on DWF vessels, this study addresses this gap by applying crime script analysis (CSA), a method widely used to examine various types of crime, to reconstruct forced labor as a process unfolding across four stages: preparation (recruitment), pre-activity (transit and onboarding), activity (exploitation at sea), and post-activity (exit and return). The findings reveal consistent patterns of forced labor that recur across different hiring and labor-supplying countries. By mapping the mechanisms of forced labor to specific temporal and spatial stages, this study offers in-depth evidence that can be used to devise stage-specific policy interventions in the DWF sector. We recommend that these interventions, for both hiring and labor-supplying countries, prioritize evidence-based strategies to combat forced labor on their distant water fleets, and focus on recruitment reform, strengthened legal accountability, enhanced port inspections, and improved victim support programs.
The phenomenon of youth gangs in Italy exhibits structural features that distinguish it from the Anglo-American and Latin American models which have long dominated international criminological debate. Two features are particularly notable: the long-standing presence of well-established mafia-type organisations, such as Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ‘Ndrangheta, which influence the context of juvenile delinquency, and the organisational flexibility that defines most contemporary youth groups. Drawing on a critical review of national and international criminological literature, as well as an analysis of three paradigmatic territorial contexts (Naples, Rome and Milan), this article presents a two-dimensional analytical typology constructed along Weberian ideal-typical lines. This typology considers both the degree of structuring of criminal activities and the presence of links to organised crime. The four resulting types – fluid aggregations, imitative groups, autonomous gangs and mafia-derived gangs – aim to capture the heterogeneity of the Italian phenomenon and to address some of the limitations of existing classifications which treat the gang–organised crime nexus as either an evolutionary trajectory or a residual variable. The typology is discussed in relation to its potential for comparison with other European contexts characterised by the coexistence of youth gangs and mature criminal organisations.
The high value and increasing scarcity of natural resources have attracted criminal entrepreneurs operating within the legal economy. A prominent example of environmental crime with severe ecological consequences is greenlaundering, the process by which illegally obtained natural resources are transformed into ‘legal products’. This includes resources extracted through clearly illegal means as well as those originating from semi-legitimate contexts. As a result, laundered products, such as timber, minerals and metals, and protected species, are marketed and sold as ‘legal’ on the international market and consumed on a large scale worldwide. Consequently, consumers purchase goods such as gold wedding rings, hardwood flooring, or products derived from endangered species as legitimate, often unknowingly contributing to environmentally harmful and illicit supply chains. This article introduces a novel case-law-based typology of natural resource laundering by applying two-step cluster analysis to 203 court cases (1995–2024) to identify empirically grounded subtypes. The two-step cluster algorithm found a cluster solution with three distinct clusters of subtypes: first, the Metamorphosis laundering cluster; second, the Papyrus laundering cluster; and, third, the Pro bono laundering cluster. The three clusters can be related to different forms of greenlaundering, albeit with nuances. The typology provides a framework for researchers, policymakers, enforcement agencies, and due diligence practitioners to understand and compare different laundering mechanisms, and to identify vulnerabilities and loopholes across natural resource supply chains.
We uncover a novel, illegal credit market on social media where loan sharks offer digital loans. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with twelve lendees and five lenders from an Estonian social media loan market in Facebook, and five debt counsellors experienced in assisting clients with such loans. We also include observations of post history in the loan groups. The results indicate that the market publicly and openly offers illegal, high-interest loans to otherwise financially excluded individuals. Consumers are unaware that they are not under a legal obligation to pay the exorbitant fees, but they do so due to the use of various punishment and intimidation methods applied by the lenders. The study informs national institutions and policymakers about new digital developments in lending and guides regulation efforts to protect vulnerable borrowers.
As digital technologies evolve, Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) markets make sophisticated tools, such as Remote Access Trojans (RATs), available to individuals with limited technical expertise. By reducing technical complexity and perceived risk, these markets may create new pathways into cybercrime. Using Gambetta’s (2009) signaling theory of trust, this study explores how CaaS markets trading RATs facilitate involvement into cybercrime. A multifaceted qualitative approach is used to collect data from 21 expert interviews and covert non-participant observations on six online platforms. The findings suggest that CaaS markets become approachable for newcomers by making RATs easier to access, use, and justify. These markets do not facilitate involvement through one single factor, but through a combination of accessibility, user-friendly design, neutralizing messages, and trust signals. Trust in CaaS markets is established and maintained through two types of signals: structural signals and seller-driven signals. Our study highlights how CaaS markets lower barriers to cybercrime through accessible tools and trust signals, emphasizing the importance of disrupting these mechanisms.
Online drug markets using encryption technologies have expanded primarily in consumer regions of the Global North. This article uses an exploratory approach to examine why cryptomarkets have flourished in Europe while remaining marginal in the traditional drug-producing region of Latin America. It argues that cryptomarkets operate as socio-technical infrastructures dependent on historically embedded forms of trust, sociopolitics, and drug-use cultures. This paper proposes an analytical framework structured around four interrelated socio-technical dimensions exploring regional differences in cryptomarket uptake: (a) social practices and cultures of trust, (b) socio-political embeddedness of drug markets, (c) trust in technological and postal infrastructures, (d) and trust in financial systems and digital payment mechanisms. We suggest that in Europe, cryptomarkets form sophisticated ecosystems supporting recreational users, while Latin American contexts remain constrained by structural inequalities and infrastructural limitations. By situating cryptomarkets within broader institutional and sociopolitical contexts, the paper offers an exploratory conceptual contribution to the socio-technical transformation of illicit drug trade and outlines a research agenda for future empirical study of digitally mediated illicit goods.
The function of government is broadly seen as an agent to control crime (Garland 1996). However, critical scholars have identified that the government’s crime control role is ambiguous, suggesting that the state and large corporations are interpenetrated (Kramer 2020; Tombs 2012; White 2018b). This paper examines the emergence of the United States Federal government and private oil industry relationship using a re-rendered two-stage genealogical inquiry method. The analysis shows the development of a complex yet largely symbiotic association of continuities, recurrences, and changes over the past century. The relationship makes clear that the largely unfettered dominance of power elites has functioned through the bulwark of the public and private sectors, continuing a colonial ontological praxis which devalues nature, human, and non-human life. The result of this particular state-corporate-industry symbiosis has been to normalize criminogenic dynamics, embed a petroleum fuelled global economy, and precipitate the climate crisis and related Earth system damage.
This article presents the first criminological holdings-level analysis of the financed emissions, carbon intensity, and capital flows of “green” investment funds. It empirically demonstrates that ESG funds with the EU’s highest sustainability classification are drastically more carbon-intensive than non-ESG funds, and systematically channel capital toward the most carbon-intensive companies and sectors in even greater levels of concentration. The data presented reveals a phenomenon that goes beyond mere greenwashing. Drawing on an interdisciplinary conceptual framework, the article argues that the EU’s ESG investing industry is systemically fraudulent, with a regulatory regime that produces and legally sanctions misleading sustainability claims which operate in a juridical vacuum, thereby demanding a new criminological conception of fraud suitable to the age of financialised stakeholder capitalism.
This exploratory study examines how online platforms and applications reshape communication, payment, and delivery practices in Chinese drug trafficking. Drawing on practice theory and using qualitative data from 174 individuals involved in the drug economy, the analysis focuses on how traffickers’ habitus, available forms of capital, and the shifting dynamics of the criminal field shape their selective adoption of digital tools. Findings indicate that although traditional practices such as phone communication, face-to-face exchanges, and conventional transport still dominate, the expanding presence of the Internet has subtly altered everyday operations. Online platforms are primarily used for communication and payment, and digital communication tools increasingly influence delivery methods, particularly in small-scale retail markets through practices such as “dead drop” deliveries. These adaptations, however, remain largely confined to retail-level exchanges and represent situated illicit risk practices shaped by actors’ position and resources within the field. Overall, the study underscores the need for policies capable of addressing China’s hybrid online–offline drug trade.
Employment scams, where victims are defrauded by applying to fake or deceptive job advertisements, have become a growing concern since Covid-19. Many jurisdictions, especially financial centres such as the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore, have reported year-on-year increases in employment-related deception. Economic pressures from the pandemic, as well as the growth of industrialised scam compounds in Southeast Asia that rely on labour trafficking, have accelerated this growing crime problem. Academic research on this trend, particularly its detection through algorithmic pattern detection, has existed for some time but remains scattered across different disciplines. A holistic structured analysis of existing research, and our current scholarly understanding of this issue and its detection, is therefore necessary to inform future approaches and priorities. This study has two complementary aims: first, it conducts an exploratory PRISMA-ScR-compliant scoping review that analyses 16 research articles relating to the commission and detection of employment scams. Second, the insights gained are used to construct a crime script, which provides a holistic understanding of how employment scams occur and possible points of intervention. Using the findings from both the review and the script, the paper analyses key findings in contemporary employment scam research, key scam typologies, prevailing research limitations, available datasets/methods and useful avenues for future study. The aim of this paper is to provide a unified overview of the current state of the art of both employment scams and current research, while defining the next best steps to support the prevention of this worsening crime trend.
This research uses the analytical potential of General Strain Theory in the study of criminal phenomena to understand why some Portuguese professional football players engage in betting related match-fixing based on a quid pro quo. The research follows a qualitative methodological strategy focused on the documental analysis of the “Jogo Duplo” court judgment - the only betting related match-fixing case tried in Portuguese court – and semi-structured interviews with former professional football players. The findings show that national footballers are subjected to three types of strains: financial problems; lack of prospects; and reality shock. These strains increase the vulnerability of these players, but they do not explain match-fixing on their own. It is their combination with catalysts of a relational (peer influence), organisational (organisational culture) and structural (opportunity structures) nature that produces this effect. This research expands the literature by showing that material deprivation (e.g. unpaid wages, low salaries) and the anticipated loss of status or lifestyle that some footballers experience in the latter stages of their careers are not the only strain factors. Footballers in the early or middle stages of their careers but with no prospects, victims of human trafficking, and players facing an abrupt career decline or stagnation may also resort to match-fixing as an illegitimate means of achieving positively valued goals, coping with the negative stimuli experienced, or achieving accomplishments in line with created expectations. This research also contributes to advancing the literature by producing micro-level knowledge, without overlooking the meso- and macro-level influences underlying the phenomenon.
The dissolution of municipal councils for mafia infiltration is a key instrument of Italian antimafia policy. While most dissolutions have occurred in regions of long-standing mafia presence, less attention has been paid to cases emerging in territories not traditionally associated with mafia dynamics. This article examines the 2020 dissolution of the municipal council of Saint-Pierre, a small municipality in the Aosta Valley (Italy), as a revelatory case for understanding how exposure to mafia influence can take shape in such contexts. Drawing on documentary sources, administrative records, judicial materials, media coverage, and semi-structured interviews, the analysis shows that the conditions leading to dissolution did not stem from consolidated criminal control. Rather, they developed through the accumulation of ordinary administrative and political vulnerabilities, including limited capacity, organizational instability, and weak political oversight. These vulnerabilities created conditions of exposure that later acquired institutional relevance when subjected to preventive scrutiny. By showing how ordinary governance fragilities both enable forms of mafia influence and are redefined through antimafia intervention, the article advances a context-centred understanding of the dynamic interplay between mafia exposure and preventive state action in settings newly recognized as exposed.
Combating the criminal networks involved in synthetic drug production has proven to be a challenge due to their scale, resilience, and highly dynamic and innovative nature. However, there is still limited detailed understanding of how these networks operate in practice and how synthetic drug production is organized at different stages. This study aims to systematically map the modi operandi of synthetic drug production through a crime script analysis of 189 Dutch court rulings, concerning the production, processing, and preparation of methamphetamine, amphetamine, and MDMA/XTC. The constructed crime script consisted of seven key acts and 18 unique roles, with each act described through scenes structured across four phases: preparation, pre-activity, activity, and post-activity. The crime script also served as an analytical framework for exploring the dynamics and organization of the crime commission process. The analysis revealed that synthetic drug production is a highly dynamic and interconnected process, characterized by the continuous movement of products between locations, considerable diversity in the types of locations used, and the frequent processing of multiple drug types at one location. The crime script developed in this study provides a comprehensive overview of the crime commission process and offers a foundation for understanding the organization, adaptation, and resilience of the criminal networks involved in synthetic drug crime.
This study employs a content analysis of 607 court judgments to examine the roles, functions, and participation mechanisms of women in cross-border bride trafficking to China. The findings show that women are extensively involved across multiple stages of trafficking operations, underscoring their integral position within these illicit networks. In doing so, the study extends existing research on the indispensable role of women in certain illicit markets by demonstrating how gendered capacities and relational resources are actively mobilized within trafficking operations. Particular attention is devoted to the phenomenon of the “second wave of trafficking,” whereby former victims subsequently become perpetrators under conditions of structural constraint, economic vulnerability, and social marginalization. This dynamic not only challenges the entrenched “female victim–male culprit” paradigm but also illuminates the self-reproductive nature of bride trafficking networks, in which cycles of victimization and offending are intertwined. Finally, the study reveals that cross-border bride trafficking operations are deeply embedded within China’s matchmaking institution, which provides both cultural legitimacy and organizational camouflage for illicit activities. Within this institutional context, trafficking practices are normalized and obscured through socially sanctioned marital arrangements. Overall, this study advances a more nuanced understanding of bride trafficking by foregrounding the complex interplay between gendered roles, cultural practices, and illicit market organization, thereby contributing to broader theoretical debates on gendered participation in human trafficking.
Police investigations have repeatedly found that offenders from different countries have widely used closed encrypted communications tools to plan and organize serious crimes. The dismantling of such services (e.g. PGP Safe, EncroChat, Sky ECC and ANOM), alongside the decryption of data, has resulted in thousands of arrests and seizures of significant quantities of drugs, weapons and money worldwide. These services are interesting not only from a law enforcement perspective. This exploratory paper addresses the potential of using such data to study organized crime. Specifically, to gain insight into the nature and structure of organized crime by analyzing the communication and communications patterns of those engaged in it. The data comprise information and connections provided by offenders themselves. Therefore, they are unaffected by potential law enforcement biases and/or subjectivity. First, we consider the generation of datasets and the validity of these data. Second, potential analysis methods are discussed. Closed encrypted communications data appear suitable for both qualitative and quantitative research methods. As they contain information about the underlying qualitative processes of organized crime, these data are of particular interest for crime script analysis, providing detailed insights into how offenders operate and the qualities they possess. As the data encompass communications networks, they can also provide insight into criminal cooperation and relationships. Criminal networks and key players can be identified through social network analysis. Although dismantled and decrypted closed encrypted communications services pose challenges in terms of their analysis, they offer a unique opportunity for further exploration and study.
