Europol, officially the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, is the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU). Established in 1998, it is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and serves as the central hub for coordinating criminal intelligence and supporting the EU's member states in their efforts to combat various forms of serious and organized crime, as well as terrorism.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is the statutory independent anti-corruption body of Hong Kong with the primary objective of combating corruption in both the public and private sectors. Established in 1974 and operating independently from the Hong Kong government and law enforcement agencies, the ICAC is headed by the Commissioner, who reports directly to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong. The ICAC has played a crucial role in maintaining Hong Kong's reputation as one of the least corrupt places globally and fostering a culture of integrity within the city.
Transnational organized crime (TOC) is organized crime coordinated across national borders, involving groups or markets of individuals working in more than one country to plan and execute illegal business ventures. In order to achieve their goals, these criminal groups use systematic violence and corruption. Common transnational organized crimes include conveying drugs, conveying arms, trafficking for sex, toxic waste disposal, materials theft and poaching.
Crime rates in Singapore are some of the lowest in the world, with petty crimes such as pickpocketing and street theft rarely occurring, and violent crime being extremely rare. Penalties for drug offences such as trafficking in Singapore are severe, and include the death penalty.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; human, weapon and drug trafficking; cybercrime; and economic crime that goes across regional and international borders, but it can be tasked to investigate any crime. The NCA has a strategic role as part of which it looks at serious crime in aggregate across the UK, especially analysing how organised criminals are operating and how they can be disrupted. To do this, it works closely with regional organised crime units (ROCUs), local police forces, and other government departments and agencies.
The Armenian mafia is a general term for organized criminal gangs that consist of ethnic Armenians. In Armenia, the structure is organized in clans called yekhpayrutyuns.
Operation In Our Sites is an ongoing effort by the U.S. government's National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center to detect and hinder intellectual property violations on the Internet. Pursuant to this operation, governmental agencies arrest suspects affiliated with the targeted websites and seize their assets including websites' domain names. Web users intending to access targeted websites are directed to the server operated by the U.S. government, and greeted with a graphic bearing the seals of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (NIPRCC), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Operation Onymous was an international law enforcement operation targeting darknet markets and other hidden services operating on the Tor network.
A darknet market is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor and I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms, weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets.
Operation Bayonet was a multinational law enforcement operation culminating in 2017 targeting the AlphaBay and Hansa darknet markets. Many other darknet markets were also shut down.
Ruja Plamenova Ignatova is a Bulgarian-born German entrepreneur who in 2019 was convicted of fraud. She is best known as the founder of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme known as OneCoin, which The Times has described as "one of the biggest scams in history". She is the subject of the 2019 BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen and the 2022 book of the same name.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted crime and illicit economies such as organised crime, terrorism, street crime, online crime, illegal markets and smuggling, human and wildlife trafficking, slavery, robberies and burglaries.
EncroChat was a Europe-based communications network and service provider that offered modified smartphones allowing encrypted communication among subscribers. It was used primarily by organized crime members to plan criminal activities. Police infiltrated the network between at least March and June 2020 during a Europe-wide investigation. An unidentified source associated with EncroChat announced on the night of 12–13 June 2020 that the company would cease operations because of the police operation.
Sky Global was a communications network and service provider founded in 2008 in Vancouver, Canada. It developed the world's largest encrypted messaging network called Sky ECC, operating through three servers of the OVHcloud company in Roubaix, France. A significant share of the system's users were international crime organizations involved in drug trafficking, and the company management was suspected of collusion.
The ANOM sting operation is a collaboration by law enforcement agencies from several countries, running between 2018 and 2021, that intercepted millions of messages sent through the supposedly secure smartphone-based proprietary messaging app ANOM. The ANOM service was widely used by criminals, but instead of providing secure communication, it was actually a trojan horse covertly distributed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), enabling them to monitor all communications. Through collaboration with other law enforcement agencies worldwide, the operation resulted in the arrest of over 800 suspects allegedly involved in criminal activity, in 16 countries. Among the arrested people were alleged members of Australian-based Italian mafia, Albanian organised crime, outlaw motorcycle clubs, drug syndicates and other organised crime groups.
ispoof.cc was a website used by many people to make unauthorised phone calls while displaying a caller ID falsely indicating that they were legitimate callers. In 2021 and 2022 it was part of an investigation by numerous law enforcement agencies into frauds enabled by this caller ID spoofing. It was shut down in November 2022 as the result of Operation Elaborate, a multi-agency investigation led by the Metropolitan Police and supported by Netherlands Police, Europol and Eurojust. As of 2022, it is the largest fraud investigation that has ever taken place in the United Kingdom.
Operation Blackwrist was launched in 2017 by Interpol investigators in Asia. Allegedly, the operation was named after a bracelet worn by one of the offenders. The operation was multinational, involving the United States, Bulgaria, and New Zealand. It was described as an "in-person" operation, in that there were investigators from law enforcement countries around the world working together in physical proximity as opposed to remotely. At the time, Interpol agents located child sexual exploitation material (CSAM) of children who appeared to be from Thailand that was depicted on several The Onion Router (TOR) websites where it was being distributed. The websites that were allegedly the primary focus of the operation were "boyxzeed.net," "boyxzeed," and "boyxzeed2.net."
Operation SpecTor was an operation coordinated by Europol, which involved nine countries, including the United States, Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands to disrupt fentanyl and opioid distribution. The operation targeted and took down the darknet market "Monopoly Market."
Operation Lobos, also known as Operation Wolves, was a Brazilian-centered 12-country multinational operation to target the operations of a TOR onion service known as Baby Heart. Additional objectives and targets of the joint operation were the deanonymization of the TOR host servers, TOR administrators, and TOR users associated with the target website and several other targeted websites/chat-sites that were alleged to contain or be used to traffic illegal images of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) and other categories of legal nude and non-nude images of persons under 18. As of February 2024, the complete list of target websites/chat-sites involved in this operation has not been released by any government; however, the primary targets appeared to be the following: Baby Heart, Hurt-meh, Boyvids 4.0, Anjos Prohibidos (BR)/Forbidden Angels, and Loli Lust. Court documents have indicated that there were at least two other websites/chat-sites that were targeted; however, the names of the websites/chat-sites have not been made public.
The Olive oil raids of 2023 in Europe refers to a coordinated law enforcement effort named Operation OPSON by Spanish, Italian police and Europol to combat a significant food fraud operation involving the production and sale of counterfeit extra virgin olive oil. This operation, uncovered by officials, involved the production of over 260,000 liters of olive oil falsely labeled as high-quality and extra virgin but deemed "unfit for consumption" by the experts.
