New Jersey Officials Say the Mafia Is Thriving Again as Tech-Savvy Mobsters Take Crime Online
New Jersey crime families have ditched hits in favor of clicks, the State Commission of Investigation was told at a hearing this week.
Sophisticated financial schemes and a willingness to share before shooting are hallmarks of 21st century organized crime, witnesses at a recent hearing said, according to NJ.com.
“The usual array of illicit money-making activity has been augmented by multi-million dollar financial frauds, global money laundering and other sophisticated criminal enterprises,” State Commission of Investigation Executive Director Bruce Keller said.
“Money is still the driver behind much of organized crime activity,” he added.
But gangland is not dead, with officials saying La Cosa Nostra remains a force to be reckoned with.
“The mob is still very active,” FBI Special Agent Thomas Regina said. “It’s changed, but it’s still very active.”
Testimony covered what was reported as “phony health and wellness fairs to bilk a union fund out of nearly $5 million, using predatory loans to squeeze struggling businesses and placing connected workers in port union jobs paying up to half a million dollars a year.”
“If there’s a way they can make money, it doesn’t matter what field, what area,” Special Agent Joseph Patricola of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General described. “They’re going to find a way to perpetrate it.”
Illegal gambling still pays off because problem gamblers kicked out of the legal markets go to illegal ones.
“Right off the bat there’s money laundering, tax evasion,” Regina said. “But then there’s the extortionate collections, leaning on people to pay up.”
Keller said criminal organizations are more willing to form partnerships where there is a profit, according to the New Jersey Monitor.
Meanwhile, street gangs have used social media and technology to add credit card theft, identity theft, phishing, and witness intimidation, Keller and others said.
“Just as the generation of children raised in recent years have become known as digital natives, so too have organized criminal gangs become digitally sophisticated,” Keller said.
Car thieves use sites like Google’s Street View to check out neighborhoods, Sgt. Sean Lake of the Newark Police Department’s gang intelligence unit said.
“They use applications such as Zillow, and they look up where the million-dollar houses are. Then they’ve gone on Google Maps, and literally they could walk down the street on Google Maps and see what cars were parked in the driveway over the last few months,” Lake said.
Meanwhile, the hearing was told, street gangs are getting younger.
Lt. Nicole Bradley of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office’s gang intelligence unit noted that last year, her office charged a 14-year-old girl with murder.
“These kids come off into the gangs at 12, 13, 14, 15 years old,” Edwin Santana of the Morris County Sheriff’s Office’s gang intelligence unit said.
“They didn’t have any sort of guidance or safety, but they found it in the gang, unfortunately,” he said.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
