AI, Crypto, and Hired Hitmen: The Disturbing New Face of Crime

Criminal networks are evolving at breakneck speed, transforming from mere profit-seekers into sophisticated entities that actively destabilize our societies. What was once distant has become alarmingly close – shootings in major European cities, drug trades in our communities, and digital threats in our homes.

This transformation represents a fundamental shift in the DNA of crime itself. Criminal organizations now deliberately erode trust in institutions and undermine the rule of law while establishing parallel financial systems designed to protect their wealth. Despite substantial investments in law enforcement, an astonishing 98% of criminal proceeds remain uncaptured in the EU, highlighting a critical vulnerability in our defences.

The digital world has become crime's new ecosystem, not just a tool. Both traditional and emerging criminal activities leverage online platforms for recruitment, marketing illicit goods, and financial transactions. Meanwhile, AI and other technologies have dramatically accelerated criminal capabilities. Generative AI creates hyper-realistic fraud, sophisticated malware, and even abuse material with minimal technical expertise. The frightening prospect of entirely AI-controlled criminal networks – where algorithms identify targets, manage logistics, and automate financial flows – may soon become reality.

These networks employ devastatingly effective cross-cutting tactics: sophisticated money laundering operations using both cash and cryptocurrencies, infiltration of legitimate businesses, systemic corruption, and increasingly organized violence. Perhaps most disturbing is the exploitation of young people as "disposable assets" recruited through social media platforms.

From cyber attacks and online fraud to child exploitation, drug trafficking, weapons distribution, and migrant smuggling – all are being transformed by this new criminal DNA. These networks operate completely unhindered by borders, spanning over 150 countries and involving more than 100 nationalities.

As these threats become more sophisticated and digital, your own awareness and digital literacy become essential first lines of defense. How prepared are you to recognize and protect yourself from these evolving threats? Join our exploration of this critical security landscape and discover what it means for our collective future.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Changing DNA of Crime
• 5:21 Society Destabilized: Crime's First Pillar
• 8:46 Digital Transformation: Crime's New Ecosystem
• 12:39 AI Acceleration: Technology Fueling Crime
• 16:43 Cross-Cutting Criminal Tactics
• 20:13 Key Criminal Landscapes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Deep Dive. We're here to cut through the noise and get straight to what you need to know to be truly well-informed. Today we're plunging into a topic that's evolving at well an unprecedented pace, a force that's not just some distant threat but is rapidly ingraining itself in our daily lives. We're talking about serious and organized crime and how its very DNA is changing. Think about the headlines you might see Frequent shootings in major European cities, the drug trade spreading it feels closer now. This isn't just news. It's a profound systemic shift impacting us all.

Speaker 2: 0:32

And to really get a handle on this shift. Our deep dive today focuses on the key findings from Europol's 2025 EU Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment. You know the EU SOCITO.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Ah, the SOCITO report Right.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Right yeah, and it's widely considered the most detailed, forward-looking, intelligence-driven analysis we have on these threats. It's specifically crafted to help decision makers across the EU.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Okay. So our mission for this Deep Dive is basically to unpack that EU SOCITO 2025 report for you, give you a shortcut to understanding this evolving landscape of serious and organized crime. We'll explore how it impacts society and, frankly, what makes it so incredibly resilient. Our goal is to really illuminate the changing DNA of crime itself. Let's get right into it. So the report highlights three core pillars that define this changing DNA. The first pillar describes how serious and organized crime is fundamentally destabilizing society.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Yeah, and what's truly, I think, eye-opening here is that organized crime has moved far beyond just simple profit-seeking. I mean, financial gain is obviously a huge driver, but they're activities now. They're like a deliberate, systemic attack on the very pillars of society.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Systemic, how so?

Speaker 2: 1:43

Well, they're not just stealing money, they're actively eroding the trust you place in institutions, undermining the rule of law, weakening governance itself. It's not just about financial loss anymore, it's about a kind of foundational rot.

Speaker 1: 1:53

And as if that weren't complicated enough, the report brings in this concept of hybrid threats. Can you elaborate a bit on that? How are these criminal networks being sort of leveraged for political ends?

Speaker 2: 2:12

Absolutely. This is a fascinating and, frankly, worrying development. This is where criminal networks driven by profit essentially become tools, proxies for external states or political actors.

Speaker 1: 2:18

So like state-sponsored crime.

Speaker 2: 2:20

In a way, yeah, imagine a foreign entity discreetly hiring a cybercrime gang to disrupt a rival nation's critical infrastructure or maybe spread disinformation. It really blurs the lines between pure crime, espionage and political destabilization, and it creates this mutually beneficial relationship where criminals gain access to cutting edge tools they might not otherwise have.

Speaker 1: 2:41

OK, connecting this to the bigger picture, the sheer scale of the money involved Illicit proceeds from drugs, online fraud, you name it it's staggering. And these billions are then laundered, reinvested, infiltrating legitimate businesses. That must make these networks incredibly hard to tackle.

Speaker 2: 2:57

It does. It destabilizes the economy and makes them resilient. And here's where it becomes genuinely alarming. Despite substantial investments in resources and new laws to combat this, the actual confiscation of criminal proceeds in the EU it remains at an estimated 2%.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Wait, did you say 2%?

Speaker 2: 3:15

2%. It's a shockingly low number.

Speaker 1: 3:17

That figure is Wow. What does that tell us about how effective our current strategies are? Are we fundamentally missing something and hitting them where it hurts most their wallets?

Speaker 2: 3:29

Well, it strongly suggests that our current methods aren't adequately disrupting the financial engines of organized crime. Not effectively enough anyway. Criminals are just incredibly adept at moving and hiding money, far outpacing our ability to seize it. It really highlights a critical vulnerability in our countermeasures and, frankly, a key area for some serious strategic reevaluation.

Speaker 1: 3:48

OK. So if the first pillar showed us how deeply crime is shaking our societal foundations, the second reveals the fertile ground where it's truly thriving the online world. This isn't just a new tool, is it? It feels more like an entirely new ecosystem for criminal enterprise.

Speaker 2: 4:04

Precisely, Digital infrastructure has become absolutely fundamental, foundational really, for criminal operations the doc, web, social media platforms, even legitimate e-commerce sites. They allow criminal networks to operate with incredible efficiency, anonymity and security. They can scale their activities globally with minimal physical contact. That's a massive game changer.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So it's clear digital infrastructure is key, but does that mean it's only about new cyber crimes like hacking and phishing, or are even traditional criminal activities drug trafficking, for instance leveraging these online platforms too? How deep does this integration go?

Speaker 2: 4:41

Oh, it's absolutely both. While you have crimes like cyber attacks, online fraud and distributing child sexual abuse material that are predominantly online, even very physical crimes benefit immensely from this digital shift. Criminals use online platforms for recruitment, for marketing illicit goods and services you know everything from weapons to drugs and for handling the money side, the financial transactions.

Speaker 1: 5:08

And they often work with highly skilled tech specialists to pull this off smoothly. And it seems that digital infrastructure itself and the data it holds are becoming primary targets. Now what does this mean for how we need to protect ourselves from things like ransomware or phishing attacks?

Speaker 2: 5:18

It means we're seeing an evolution in their tactics. We're talking ransomware, obviously, but also DDoS attacks, distributed denial of service, which just overwhelms systems, business email compromise, bec fraud, where they trick employees into transferring funds, and, of course, phishing is still huge. But what's particularly insightful, I think, is that stolen data isn't always used immediately or just once. Criminals often exploit it repeatedly, sometimes over several years. This leads to victims being targeted again and again.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Repeated victimization. That's grim. And this brings us nearly to the third and incredibly impactful pillar how organized crime is being radically accelerated by AI and other new technologies. This isn't just an incremental change, is it? The report suggests it's genuinely reshaping the entire criminal landscape, acting both as a catalyst for crime and a powerful driver for criminal efficiency.

Speaker 2: 6:10

That's spot on AI, especially generative AI models, the ones that can create text images. Code has drastically lowered the barriers to entry for many digital crimes.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Lower the barriers. How?

Speaker 2: 6:22

Well, criminals can now craft hyper-realistic convincing messages in multiple languages, target victims globally with much more precision. They can create sophisticated malware more easily and even horrifyingly produce child sexual abuse material, all with much less effort and technical expertise than before. It's sort of democratizing certain forms of high tech crime.

Speaker 1: 6:45

And as an efficiency driver. Ai's automation capabilities sound like they're truly transforming criminal operations. What are the practical impacts of this and what does it mean when the report talks about the potential emergence of entirely AI controlled criminal networks? That sounds like science fiction.

Speaker 2: 7:01

It does, but it might not be far off. Practically, ai automation enables criminals to reach vastly more victims, to be much more targeted in their approach and, crucially, to expand their global reach with fewer human resources. Think about a fraud scheme that can automatically generate and send millions of personalized phishing emails and the idea of entirely AI controlled networks. It means crime could potentially be run by algorithms identifying targets, managing logistics, automating payment flows, maybe even laundering money. That's a truly chilling prospect.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Beyond AI, though, what other technologies are criminals harnessing to amplify their reach?

Speaker 2: 7:38

Well, technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies are absolutely central. They facilitate payments and money laundering, and we're seeing this move beyond just cybercrime into more traditional areas like drug trafficking and migrant smuggling. It's becoming mainstream for them.

Speaker 1: 7:53

So crypto isn't just for tech crime anymore.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Not at all. Plus, there's the specific threat of cryptocurrency and NFT theft. You know non-fungible tokens as unique digital assets and even crypto jacking, where criminals secretly use your computer's processing power to mine cryptocurrency without you even knowing.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Okay, so we've explored these core changes to crime's DNA, the destabilization, the online shift, the tech acceleration. But how does this new evolving entity operate? What are the common tactics, the cross-cutting strategies they employ across all their activities? Let's start with arguably the most critical how they handle their money.

Speaker 2: 8:30

Right the money. Criminal networks are incredibly sophisticated here. They build parallel financial systems designed purely to protect and grow their illicit wealth. They deliberately obfuscate financial flows, hiding the origins, moving money through complex layers to make it virtually untraceable.

Speaker 1: 8:47

And the report mentions, cash is still prominent Cash couriers moving physical money or using cash-intensive businesses like restaurants as fronts.

Speaker 2: 8:55

Yes, cash is definitely still a major factor.

Speaker 1: 8:57

But the digitalization of finance has significantly heightened the threat, creating what the report calls a digital cloak.

Speaker 2: 9:04

And this digital cloak is woven with tools like cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance platforms, defi operating outside traditional banks and AI automation. These offer much greater anonymity. They enable tactics like chain hopping, where criminals rapidly switch between different cryptocurrencies.

Speaker 1: 9:22

Making it hard to follow the trail.

Speaker 2: 9:24

Exactly, and things like crypto swapping services that instantly convert one coin into another, all designed to make tracing illicit transactions incredibly difficult for law enforcement.

Speaker 1: 9:34

There's a powerful example of this in the report right the chip mixer take down in March 2023.

Speaker 2: 9:39

Yes, chip mixer. This unlicensed cryptocurrency mixer allegedly laundered something like 152,000 bitcoins. If it's worth Approximately EUR 2.73 billion a staggering amount and much of it was linked to dark web markets. Ransomware gangs, illicit goods.

Speaker 1: 9:56

Just hidden in plain sight digitally and who's making this possible?

Speaker 2: 10:00

It's often specialized professional money launderers and brokers. These aren't necessarily the drug lords themselves. They establish these underground financial systems. They offer extensive unregulated financial services to multiple different criminal networks. It's really an entire shadow financial ecosystem built to clean dirty money.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Okay, this next point feels like where it truly becomes pervasive the criminal exploitation of legal business structures, LBS. The report says infiltrating legitimate businesses is a key enabling tactic, acting as a multifunctional tool.

Speaker 2: 10:35

It's astonishing how pervasive this is. Yeah, Criminals use legitimate businesses to support, disguise or facilitate virtually any criminal activity and, crucially, to launder the proceeds. The report emphasizes that really all business sectors are at risk.

Speaker 1: 10:49

All sectors.

Speaker 2: 10:50

Everything from seemingly innocent import-export companies to real estate, hospitality, construction, you name it. It makes it a really insidious threat that can touch seemingly legitimate enterprises.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Then there's corruption. The report bluntly calls this the DNA of crime.

Speaker 2: 11:05

It really is fundamental. Corruption acts as both a key enabler and a catalyst. It destabilizes society, erodes trust in law enforcement and public institutions and directly facilitates illicit trade.

Speaker 1: 11:18

And it's not just like old school brown envelopes full of cash anymore.

Speaker 2: 11:21

No, it's adapting, too, to corruption is adapting to digitalization. Criminals are targeting individuals who have access to digital systems think databases, government portals. They're using digital recruitment tactics and we're even seeing the rise of sophisticated corruption brokers who specialize in connecting criminals with corrupt officials.

Speaker 1: 11:41

And this brings us, inevitably, perhaps, to the escalating threat of violence. The report highlights intensifying organized crime-related violence in some EU countries, spilling into public spaces, instilling fear.

Speaker 2: 11:52

Absolutely. Violence both enables criminal activities, intimidation, enforcement and results from them, often triggered by score settling between rival groups. But what's particularly alarming and relatively new is this concept of violence as a service.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Violence as a service, like ordering a hit online.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Essentially, yes. Professional actors, including shockingly young perpetrators, are recruited via online platforms and encrypted communications. They're hired to carry out violent acts remotely bombings, shootings, kidnappings often facilitated by readily available trafficked weapons.

Speaker 1: 12:26

There's a chilling illustration of this from Germany, January 2025. A criminal network hired to carry out violent retaliation attacks using explosives and kidnappings.

Speaker 2: 12:36

Yes, that case really demonstrates how criminals are almost contracting out these brutal tasks. It distances the main players.

Speaker 1: 12:44

And that leads us directly to another deeply disturbing, cross-cutting tactic the criminal exploitation of young perpetrators.

Speaker 2: 12:51

Yeah, this is a major concern. Criminal networks increasingly exploit young people, adolescents, even children. It's a deliberate tactic to avoid detection, capture and punishment for the higher-ranking members. They see these youth as lower risk disposable assets.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Disposable assets Horrible. How do they recruit them?

Speaker 2: 13:08

Recruitment primarily happens online Social media messaging apps. They use language tailored to youth, coded communication, sometimes even gamification elements. They lure vulnerable young people by glorifying a luxurious or violent lifestyle. It's effectively grooming them into crime.

Speaker 1: 13:25

What roles are these young people playing?

Speaker 2: 13:27

A whole range. They become money mules moving illicit cash. They act as script kiddies in cyber attack basically amateur hackers using pre-made tools. They work as drug couriers or, tragically, even participate in violent acts like extortion and killings.

Speaker 1: 13:42

The report mentions a really disturbing example the CVLT online group arrests in January 2025.

Speaker 2: 13:48

Yes, the CVLT case is truly horrific. This group groomed and coerced minors globally to produce child sexual abuse material and images of self-harm. They threatened to distribute compromising photos if the victims tried to escape. It's coercion at its worst.

Speaker 1: 14:03

OK, let's shift focus slightly and look at how these changing tactics play out in specific criminal landscapes. First up, cyber attacks. They seem to be proliferating, targeting critical infrastructure, governments.

Speaker 2: 14:14

They are, and what's especially interesting here is the motivation. It's often state aligned or ideologically driven, blurring the lines with pure profit. And the ransomware as a service model has really changed the game.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Like LockBit.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Exactly Like LockBit, which was dismantled, or at least disrupted, in February 2024. They were known for triple extortion they encrypt your data, threaten to leak it publicly and launch attacks against your customers or partners. This model significantly expands the pool of potential offenders, because you don't need to be a master hacker to launch an attack anymore.

Speaker 1: 14:47

Beyond those direct attacks, what about the more insidious ways criminals are reaching into our wallets? Online fraud seems to be booming, supercharged now by automation and AI crafting these hyper-realistic narratives.

Speaker 2: 15:00

Investment fraud is a massive component. Yes, Take the Juicy Fields Ponzi scheme that resulted in EUR 645 million in damages Huge.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Juicy Fields. What was that?

Speaker 2: 15:09

It involved Russian masterminds money laundering in Cyprus. They used a seemingly legitimate business front, a fake cannabis investment platform, to lure victims. Classic Ponzi structure, but very sophisticated online marketing.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And then there's romance fraud. It sounds like AI is making this even more cruel.

Speaker 2: 15:28

It really is. Ai tools like voice cloning, deep fakes, those fake videos or images and large language models generating scripts. They enhance the realism dramatically. It creates entirely new scenarios for social engineering, making it harder than ever to tell what's real. The emotional manipulation is devastating.

Speaker 1: 15:45

Moving to a truly horrific area online child sexual exploitation CSE.

Speaker 2: 15:50

Its online nature is undeniable now, and AI is dramatically accelerating both the generation and distribution of this material. It enables these highly secured online communities of offenders to operate and share content.

Speaker 1: 16:02

There was a case mentioned.

Speaker 2: 16:03

Yes, A profoundly disturbing case from February 2025. A Danish national arrested for running an online platform dedicated to fully AI-generated CSAM. He had a symbolic subscription fee. Exclusive communities sharing tips on how to create and distribute this material. It's sickening.

Speaker 1: 16:22

OK, let's turn to the trade in illicit drugs Still a massive global market, always dynamic. What are the key trends? Cocaine and synthetic drugs.

Speaker 2: 16:31

Right For cocaine. We've seen what analysts call a waterbed effect in 2024. The waterbed effect yeah, imagine pushing down on one side of a waterbed. The water just shifts elsewhere, right. Similarly, law enforcement successes like a drop in maritime seizures at some major EU ports seem to have simply forced traffickers to diversify. They find new routes, new methods, potentially spreading drug-related violence and recruiting young people into the trade in smaller, previously less affected ports.

Speaker 1: 16:57

And synthetic drugs are a really serious concern, aren't they?

Speaker 2: 17:00

Indeed, the EU is actually a global production center for many synthetic drugs now, and production seems to be spreading to more member states. There is a huge concern over potent synthetic opioids like nitazines, and we absolutely need to monitor fentanyl closely, given the devastation it's caused elsewhere.

Speaker 1: 17:18

And there was a lab bust.

Speaker 2: 17:19

Yes, august 2024,. The dismantling of what was described as the largest synthetic opioid laboratory ever found in Poland shows the scale of production.

Speaker 1: 17:30

The trade in illegal firearms and explosives. That's a critical threat because it enables so many other crimes. How have the black market dynamics changed here?

Speaker 2: 17:39

The dynamics are shifting significantly. Yes, we're seeing an increasing presence of privately manufactured firearms.

Speaker 1: 17:45

You mean like homemade guns?

Speaker 2: 17:47

Sometimes assembled from legally bought components, sometimes 3D printed. These are often called ghost guns because they lack serial numbers and are hard to trace. There's also a rise in industrially produced counterfeit weapons replicas of real firearms.

Speaker 1: 18:00

There was a specific example from Poland in 2024.

Speaker 2: 18:03

That's right An arrest of a man selling assembled weapons, including automatic guns, apparently to contract killers operating in Sweden. It really highlights the fluidity and the cross-border danger of these illicit networks.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Migrants smuggling another highly profitable and adaptable criminal enterprise. But the human cost is immense.

Speaker 2: 18:23

Absolutely Significant loss of life, increasing violence, recklessness from the smugglers it's brutal. What's also deeply concerning is how hybrid threat actors remember them from earlier are instrumentalizing irregular migration flows.

Speaker 1: 18:37

How so.

Speaker 2: 18:38

Particularly at the EU's external borders. They might facilitate or even encourage flows to put pressure on a country. This amplifies opportunities for criminal smuggling services and can potentially destabilize societies by creating new tensions and vulnerabilities.

Speaker 1: 18:52

OK, finally, we need to touch on fraud schemes against the financial interests of the EU and member states. This is about stealing public money, essentially.

Speaker 2: 19:00

Exactly Targeting vast public funds, whether it's through subsidy fraud, customs fraud, virtues fraud, excise fraud on things like tobacco and alcohol.

Speaker 1: 19:08

And they're adapting here too.

Speaker 2: 19:10

Constantly Exploiting online platforms using AI for fake applications or invoices, targeting fast-growing sectors where regulations might be lagging. The economic impact of VAT fraud alone is enormous. We're talking about MTIC fraud missing trader, intra-community fraud which exploits VAT rules on cross-border trade within the EU. The losses run into several tens of billions of euros annually. That's money directly drained from public services, from taxpayers like you.

Speaker 1: 19:39

When you pull all this together, I mean the scale is just immense. It becomes clear these networks operate completely unhindered by borders. The report says they have multinational memberships spanning over 150 countries, over 100 nationalities involved. Truly global. But what happens when global geopolitics collide with this already complex criminal landscape, like the war in Ukraine?

Speaker 2: 19:59

That's a crucial question and the impact is profound. Geopolitical events directly shake the criminal landscape the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, for example. It's facilitated the widespread distribution of weapons, creating a massive new black market for firearms that could plague Europe for years.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Right Weapons flooding out.

Speaker 2: 20:16

Exactly. It could also lead to demobilized soldiers, perhaps traumatized or lacking opportunities. Turning to crime, there are also huge risks for corruption and financial crimes linked to the eventual reconstruction efforts in Ukraine, and it might even intensify cybercrime cooperation or perhaps competition between Russian and Ukrainian criminal groups. Post-war Geopolitical shifts absolutely create new opportunities and challenges for organized crime.

Speaker 1: 20:41

So, after exploring all of this, I mean it's a lot to take in. What's the fundamental takeaway in this deep dive into the Sotha TTI report?

Speaker 2: 20:48

I think the fundamental takeaway is that serious and organized crime is a pervasive, serious and truly fundamentally changing threat. A threat to the EU, its citizens, its economy and the rule of law and, to quickly recap that, changing DNA. It destabilizes society through vast illicit profits and through criminal networks acting as proxies for hybrid threats. It's increasingly nurtured online. The digital space is now central, not peripheral, and, critically, it is being accelerated by AI and other new technologies. This makes crime more accessible, more automated and enhances its scale and reach like never before.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Understanding that changing DNA is absolutely key. We really encourage you listening to consider what aspects of this deep dive stood out most to you.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Because ultimately, understanding these digital and technological shifts in organized crime, it fundamentally changes how we all must approach personal and societal security in this modern world.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Yeah, absolutely so. Perhaps a provocative thought to leave you with. As these threats become more sophisticated, more digital, how essential does your own digital literacy, your own critical thinking, become? Is that now our first line of defense, something to mull over as you navigate your own digital world?