the crime report

The annual H.F. Guggenheim symposium has emerged as a key date on the nation’s calendar of criminal justice events, primarily because it is the only conference that brings together a select audience of journalists, academics, practitioners and policy makers to discuss current issues of criminal justice facing the nation. You are cordially invited to join [...]

Notre Dame University
http://law.nd.edu/people/faculty-and-administration/teaching-and-research-faculty/g-robert-blakey
(574) 631-5717)
G.R.Blakey.1@nd.edu
 
Blakey helped draft the federal Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Title IX of which is known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). He has been involved in drafting RICO-type legislation in 22 states. He is an expert on organized crime, wiretapping, and other criminal law subjects.

Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a USA Today account of a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials.  The report by the Justice Department’s National Gang Intelligence Center concludes gangs are the “primary retail-level [...]

Counterfeiting, an old crime, is once again in the spotlight due to the current recession, WUPW in Toledo reported.
Link: WUPW Toldeo
 
 
 

Northwest Ohio and Southeastern Michigan police departments confirm that they have all seen a rise in counterfeit bills being used throughout the region.
A handful of businesses in the region report losing thousands of dollars just [...]

Thieves brought a phony chimney to clean out a Brooklyn bank’s safe-deposit room, the New York Post reported.
 
Read story here.

Safety comes at a price in Gardênia Azul, a flatland slum in the scruffy west end of Rio de Janeiro. Newsweek reports the area is patrolled by ”the militia”, a self-designated neighborhood police force that runs things with an iron heel and a hand in everyone’s pocket, taking a cut of all local business and services. No one is [...]

Terrorists and other organized crime outfits around the world are increasingly turning to film piracy to finance their operations, says a new report by the RAND organization.  Rarely prosecuted with weak criminal statues, researchers found that film piracy turns a greater profit than narcotic dealing with little risk of governmental sanction. 
Read the full report here

In a New York Times op-ed, two experts write that the asset forfeiture being pursued in the case of Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff is the exception, not the rule, in criminal cases. “Lawbreakers are rarely forced to give up the  proceeds of their crimes,” write Charles A. Intriago, a former prosecutor who publishes a website on [...]

Today’s traditional Mafia family in New York City has ventured far from its roots as an ultra-secret society formed at the dawn of the Depression, says the New York Daily news. The mob  is dealing with the new economies and technologies — sometimes a jump quicker than law enforcement. Said Michael Gaeta, supervisor of the New York FBI’s organized crime [...]

Tom Diaz, author of a new book, “No Borders: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement,” looks at the potentially ominous future of criminal street gangs in the U.S.

In the 1980s, few law enforcement officials had heard of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) or the 18 th Street gang.  Yet within two decades, these gangs metastasized from [...]

The investigation  into public corruption in New Jersey has shone on a spotlight on a low-key, career prosecutor who directed the heavily publicized raids last month, reports the Newark Star-Ledger. He is acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra Jr., who took over after when his predecessor left office last year to run for governor. Marra has spent much of his career working behind [...]

The Rise (and Fall) of one of China’s Most Notorious Human Smugglers
In the summer of 1993, ten Chinese would-be immigrants drowned when the Golden Venture, the rickety vessel smuggling them and 276 others to America, ran aground on a New York City beach. After more than a decade of police work, authorities tracked down and convicted [...]

The commission created to break the mob’s grip on the New York City waterfront became its own bastion of lawlessness, employing some of the same corrupt methods as the gangsters it was supposed to pursue, investigators said Tuesday in a scathing report. The New York Times said top officials at the $11-million-a-year bistate agency divided spoils, [...]

Often overlooked by law enforcement,  it is estimated that organized retail crime cost suppliers $8.7 billion dollars in 2007. Noted by the FBI as one pipeline for terrorist funding in the Middle  East, retail crime also puts public health due to the replacement of used goods back into the marketplace.  ASIS Foundation, the research arm [...]

With the mill price for a black cherry tree currently at $850 per thousand board feet, sugar maple at $475 per thousand board feet and red oak  at $380 per thousand board feet,  timber theft is a lucrative and rising business across the nation. New York State recently released a report, “Timber Thieves in New [...]

A Canadian murder trial is exposing the international network of the Bandidos, one of North America’s most vicious outlaw biker gangs.
Peace Arch Park straddles the Canadian-American border between the province of British Columbia and Washington State, a tribute to lasting peace between Canada and the United States. It was here, authorities believe, that Canadian outlaw [...]

Cross-border hit men complicate the battle with Mexico’s drug cartels
Antonio Mendoza Ledezma, a hit man for a cross-border street gang called the Aztecas may be one of the most prolific assassins in Mexican history. After he was arrested last month, he told police that he had committed 140 murders and ordered the deaths of another [...]

Resources from the 4th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, held at John Jay College, Feb 2009.

In the next week more than one million visitors will be descending on Vancouver for the winter Olympics, but many of the attendees will not be truly prepared for protecting themselves, finds a new report, “The Dark Side of the Winter Olympics.”
The report, prepared by the Online Safety Foundation, discusses issues of cyber security, including, [...]

Cybercriminals are using social networking websites like Facebook to gain backdoor access to business computer networks, reports USA Today. The intrusions can expose a company to theft of its most sensitive data. Such attacks illustrate a dramatic shift underway in the Internet underground. Cybercriminals are moving aggressively to take advantage of social networks in workplace settings, an unanticipated chink [...]