(by Erik R. BARNETT, Attaché to the European Union, U.S. ICE Homeland Security Investigations) On a winter’s evening in February 2015, a middle-aged man in the United States engages in an online dialogue, through a popular U.S.-based email service, with a similarly middle-aged man in Romania. The two men discuss sexually explicit photos of the…
Erik R. Barnett
(by Erik Barnett, Attaché to the European Union – U.S. ICE Homeland Security Investigations) Law enforcement has too often reacted to cybercrime by wringing its hands and lamenting the lack of technology, resources, and training to compete with sophisticated, savvy, and well-financed cybercriminals. The qualities of cybercriminals which cause so much anxiety in law enforcement…
[box style=’note’] Summary Large-scale criminal use of crypto-currency poses significant risk because of a lack of universal regulation, a gap in critical industry-based checks against money laundering, a decentralized administration, and the anonymity of internal crypto-currency transactions. The use of crypto-currency in the sale of illegal narcotics as well as other illicit goods and to…