About Organized Crime

When you think of organized crime, you probably picture the Italian and Sicilian Mafioso of television and the silver screen. But in recent years, the face of organized crime has changed, and the threat is broader and more complex than ever.

Today, organized crime includes:

• Russian mobsters who fled to the U.S. in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse;
• Groups from African countries like Nigeria that engage in drug trafficking and financial scams;
• Chinese tongs, Japanese Boryokudan, and other Asian crime rings; and
• Enterprises based in Eastern European nations like Hungary and Romania.

All of these groups have a presence in the U.S. or are targeting our citizens from afar—using the Internet and other technologies of our global age. More and more, they are literally becoming partners in crime, realizing they have more to gain from cooperating than competing. Source: FBI