Transnational Organized Crime (Catch All)

**AdamG** · 03-23-2017

A senior National Security Agency official appeared to confirm that North Korean computer hackers were behind a multi-million dollar heist targeting Bangladesh’s central bank last year.
Computer hackers attempted to steal $951 million, but only got away with $81 million, some of which was later recovered. After the theft, security firms quickly pointed the finger at North Korea. Other experts disputed that finding. But on Tuesday, NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett appeared to say North Korea was the culprit during a cryptic exchange at a Washington forum.

Speaking at an Aspen Institute roundtable, Ledgett pointed out that private sector researchers had linked the digital break-in in Bangladesh to the 2014 hack on Sony Pictures, which the U.S. government attributed to Pyongyang.
“If that linkage from the Sony actors to the Bangladeshi bank actors is accurate — that means that a nation state is robbing banks,” Ledgett said. “That’s a big deal.”
The moderator of the event, former Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin, quickly followed up: “Do you believe that there are nation states now robbing banks?”
Ledgett offered a simple answer: “I do.”

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/21/...sh-bank-heist/

United States federal prosecutors are reportedly building a case implicating North Korea's government of orchestrating an $81 million cyber heist from the Bangladesh central bank's account at the New York Federal Reserve.

The Wall Street Journal, citing officials familiar with the matter, reported on Wednesday that prosecutors also believe Chinese middlemen helped Pyongyang plunder Bangladesh Bank's funds. The case implicates the country of North Korea, rather than any particular North Korean officials, and also includes charges against the Chinese middlemen or businesses allegedly involved.
The US Treasury is reportedly also considering sanctions against the middlemen.

http://www.dw.com/en/fbi-prepares-ch...ist/a-38081602

**davidbfpo** · 04-12-2017

Eight threads have been merged here and theme includes all types of crime and their consequences.

**davidbfpo** · 04-12-2017

An IISS meeting on this theme on the 5th April 2017 and explained as:

The IISS and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime warmly invite you to join this discussion on transnational threats. It will be an opportunity to explore some of the findings of a recent US National Defense University project on the emergence, over the past ten years, of a ‘highly adaptive and parasitic’ criminal ecosystem. The panellists will explore its consequences for national security, state fragility and the global order. Specifically, the discussion will address the following questions:what is the role of social media in bolstering the appeal of anti-state actors, allowing them to establish ‘cult-like’ followings? To what extent are jihadist networks increasingly a part of the drug-smuggling business in West African ‘protection economies’? How is the growing grey space between licit and illicit commerce explored by global counterfeit and smuggling networks? And how have technological innovations, which have made our lives and work so much easier, produced disconcerting vulnerabilities in the cyber domain that are increasingly being exploited by criminal groups, terrorists and hostile states alike

The speaker bios are there too:http://www.iiss.org/en/events/events...l-threats-d6fd

There is an IISS podcast via YouTube (87 mins):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS7C03oZMM8