Putting organized crime in the spotlight

Now a reader of mine 'Luck of Fire' has become rather curious about the nature of the organized crime in the Chinese community here in the UK - she seems to be keen to find holes to pick in Peter's story to try to find out why such crimes cannot be easily solved. Each time she seems to raise a good question, my friend Peter comes up with a simple explanation to deal with it - the fact remains that organized crime exists in practically every country in the world. You can go to Russia and there's the Russian mafia братва ('Bratva') , go to Japan and there's the ヤクザ ('Yakuza'), go to Korea and there's the 깡패 ('Kkangpae'), go to Italy and there's the Italian mob 'Cosa Nostra' and in Greece there is the νονοί της νύχτας ('Nonoí ti̱s nýchtas'). Need I go on? There's organized crime in virtually every country in the world - in more corrupt countries, these mafia gangsters are more out in the open, but other countries, they are forced to operate underground and fly under the radar to avoid the police. Let's explore this topic further today.

Now in Singapore, there has been a long tradition of organized crime that goes back a long way - although in recent decades, these organizations operate on the very fringes of society and the vast majority of law-abiding Singaporeans have no contact whatsoever with any kind of gangsters or the mafia in Singapore. Likewise in the UK, I am aware of the Chinese, Romanian and Russian mafia operating in the neighbourhood of Soho where I live, but these gangs keep a low-profile and do not want to attract the attention of the police, so ordinary residents like myself have no contact with them whatsoever. A strong police presence in the neighbourhood ensures the safety of the residents here and many of these criminals are interested in making money at the end of the day (through their various clandestine activities) - so they have no incentive to draw any attention to themselves.

Nonetheless, I think 'Luck of Fire' has raised a few interesting questions which did get me thinking and no, I don't have all the answers to her questions. So what I have done is I have posed these questions back to Peter (the former legal interpreter) and a police officer friend of mine from the London Metropolitan police - he prefers to remain anonymous so I will simply refer to him as 'PO' (short for Police Officer) in the following piece. PO has read all the stories of the interviews that I have done with Peter about Chinese organized crime on my blog.

Limpeh: Now my first question is that some of these crime rackets are really quite elaborate. In the case of Sabah, they lured a woman and her husband all the way from Malaysia to commit crimes in the UK - now surely there is a simpler way to try to achieve the same result? Like if you are in possession of some cloned credit cards and you intend to use these cloned cards to buy expensive goods, surely there's a less complex way to do so? How about making these purchases online with these cloned cards? People do a lot of shopping online these days.

PO: It is easy to trace someone when they make a purchase online - you have an email address, you can trace the IP address and say you order a lot of goods from a website, you need to have it delivered somewhere - there is that important time lag between the purchase being processed online and the actual delivery. Most credit card companies can flag up irregular patterns on their systems, say if a person who has this card lives in Singapore and suddenly a purchase is made in London - they may contact the person and ask them if they are abroad and on holiday. If it is indeed a case of a cloned card, then the police can go with the delivery man and arrest the person receiving the goods on the spot. Too easy - there's just way too much risks involved. The criminals won't take such risks, no.

Contrary to belief, it is not that easy to commit crimes online.

You may think that going into a shop in person would be more risky, with CCTVs pointing at you from every corner, but it isn't. But if this purchase was made in person, the criminal can simply walk out of the shop quickly and once the criminal has left the shop with the goods - it becomes very hard to track them down and recover the stolen goods. We have limited resources to launch a massive manhunt over crimes like that - if we had a terrorist, like a suicide bomber in central London or something equally dangerous, then we'll spare no expenses and get every person available on the case at once; but if someone steals something like a bottle of perfume from a shop that is worth £30 or a pair of jeans worth £50, then our response would have to be proportional to the threat to public safety. That's the key.

Criminals would often strike when the shop is very busy and the staff are under a lot of pressure to serve a long queue of customers at the till. These criminals would often obscure their faces with hats, scarves, sunglasses, even wigs to try to hide their faces and even if you do pick up a face on the CCTV - there it is obscured by a hat, wig and sunglasses and it is very hard to make a positive identification. Please don't imagine that just because someone is caught on CCTV that we can easily make an identification - it's really not that simple if the criminal is well prepared.

In winter, we have to wrap up - can you recognize me in this photo?

Limpeh: It is such a fallacy that just because you have CCTV you can catch criminals! As if they are going to make a simple mistake like that if they have planned a complex crime, like they know that there are CCTVs everywhere.

PO: The criminals - well, the pros anyway - know exactly how to deal with CCTVs. Recently, there was this case of these criminals who cloned credit cards from the Middle East and we had these criminals who showed up in shops in London dressed in traditional Arab clothing with their faces completely veiled apart from their eyes. Now the first reaction of the cashier dealing with such a customer is simply, "very rich Arab lady, from the Middle East, very religious and conservative, She is a Muslim, I must be polite and respectful". It could be anyone behind that veil, it could even be a man - you just see a pair of eyes. They could be dancing in front of the CCTV for an hour and you would get absolutely no useful identifying features - the bottom line is this: these criminals are two steps ahead of us when it comes to CCTV. They are extremely smart and super well prepared - they pay great attention to detail.

Peter: There is also the cultural barrier as well which is a big factor: the Chinese mafia like to deal with people like Sabah because they know how to exploit her: take a small town girl out of Sabah, put her in a big city where she barely speaks the language and she becomes very vulnerable and easy to exploit. Trying to exploit a local English person the same way would be a lot harder as the local English person would be able to work out a way to get help, to escape - take the example of Sabah being driven around North London and not being able to recognize the streets. To Sabah, they all look the same and she was not able to identify where her husband was initially held - this was because Sabah was new to England, she spoke very little English and found it confusing, this made her an easy person to manipulate and control. If someone were to put me in the car and drive me around North London, I would probably be able to recognize a lot of it as I know London very well - I was brought up here, I'm a local, I speak English.

Also, Sabah and her husband initially trusted Tai Kor because they were dealing with a friendly fellow Chinse-Malaysian, it is easy to gain the trust of someone you wish to exploit if you know their culture and can communicate with them easily. This is why the various mafia groups in London tend to work within their own communities - the Chinese mafia tend to deal only with the Chinese diaspora, the Russian mafia only deal with the Russians, the Vietnamese mafia only deal with the Vietnamese, the Romanian mafia tend to deal only within their community, you get the idea. You pick the lowest hanging fruit, you go for the easiest targets - that is why Sabah was an ideal target as she was simple, naive and stupid, they will not target someone who was confident, intelligent and sophisticated.

The Chinatown mafia mostly operate in the Chinese community.

Limpeh: Still, for a crime to span so many countries, such as in the cloned credit card case Sabah was involved in, I think the question is, isn't there an easier, less complex way to make money through organized crime?

PO: You may as well say, "why not just get a job? No risk, you go to work, you get paid, you don't have to worry about getting caught or going to jail." Do not underestimate these mafia gangsters - they are run by some extremely intelligent people, far more intelligent than you and I, or any of your readers. There is a good reason for them to create these huge, elaborate rackets that can span several countries - the reason is usually profit. They can make a lot of money from these schemes - so using cloned Asian credit cards to buy expensive luxury goods in London, that makes them a profit of several thousand pounds a day even after deducting the costs they have to invest in. How many businesses make that kind of profit? I make a few thousands pounds a month and that is the salary I have to earn by working my butt off for the police - these people make the same amount in a matter of hours.

The mafia make a lot of money, tonnes of money...

Peter: These Chinese gangsters are crazy rich, like they make so much money it is unreal. They invest in schemes that are high tech - in the cloned credit card case, let's look at the costs. There is someone in Asia stealing these credit card numbers, presumably someone who works for a legitimate company that processes online sales transactions. They have to buy that data, then they pay some people good money to create these high quality credit card clones based on the information they have, then at that stage, you have one chance to take that card to a store and make back all that money you have invested in getting that card. So even if the cost per card is £2000, as long as you make a purchase bigger than £2000, you make a profit. And if the purchase is worth £4000, then you've doubled your initial investment. No investment product out there offers you the chance to double your money just like that - no businessman can double his initial investment just like that. These scams are elaborate and expensive, but they generate an insane amount of profit over a very short space of time.

This was part of the reason why I left my old job - I saw these people making thousands of pounds a day, whilst I was slowly chalking up time, doing my translations, getting my time sheet signed for the work I have done. Sometimes we argue over petty little things like if I submitted my transport claim form correctly - it got silly I have been refused a £4.80 transport claim before I didn't fill in the date on the claim form - that was the last straw as they were being such total assholes over just £4.80, can you believe it. I thought fuck this - I really need to do something else, I'm in the wrong job. No I didn't go work for the mafia, but it did give me a glimpse into a world where people make insane amounts of money just like that. The Chinese mafia are driving the most expensive sports cars whilst I am taking the bus to work.

Legal interpreters are not that well paid...

Limpeh: Can we talk about organized crime and the link with illegal immigrants please?

Peter: Illegal immigrants represent the most vulnerable people in society - they are the most easily exploited. Imagine if you did a job and you didn't get paid - you could sue the employer, you could take legal action against them. If they mistreated you, you could easily go to the police and ask for help. Now illegal immigrants can't do any of the above, they live in fear of anyone in authority, even if they get injured, they cannot go to the hospital as they are not entitled to any kind of healthcare and they fear coming in contact with anyone in authority which may lead to their deportation from the country. This is not just a problem in the UK, but it happens in so many other countries like Thailand.

From a business point of view, they represent the ideal worker - you can work them as hard as you like, you can pay them as little as you like, they cannot complain, they cannot go to the authorities even if they are not happy, you can treat them like crap, they are completely at your mercy. The less you pay your workers, the bigger your profit margins are - yes it is illegal and a risk if they get caught, but with the bigger risk comes bigger profits. These mafia gangs know how to handle and minimize this risk - it is a simple cost-benefit, risk vs reward analysis really.

PO: Don't forget, illegal immigrants often pay these gangs a lot of money to be smuggled into the UK in the first place, it is a big business. They usually arrange for these illegal immigrants to come over on tourist visas and then once they get here, they are at the mercy of these gangs because no one else will give these illegal immigrants a job and they are afraid of being deported by the authorities. So there is an inextricable link between organized crime and illegal immigrants. We have illegal immigrants coming from not just China, but Russia, Ukraine, Beleraus, India, Africa, South America... And they are brought here by these mafia gangs to be a part of their organized crime network.

Limpeh: I have to ask this: every time 'Luck of Fire' seemed to have identified a possible loophole for the police to try to identify Sabah's 'handler', Peter pointed out that it was an angle that the police had already explored and came up with nothing because the mafia were always two steps ahead of the police: the number plate of the car was fake, they took Sabah and Dajie to Chinese restaurants where the staff had conveniently not kept a copy of the CCTV of their visit and 'cannot remember' anything about the customers from that day. Are the mafia always two steps ahead of the police?

Are the mafia always a few steps ahead of the police?

PO: This does describe what I go through all the time - we get a case, we look for possible areas where we can get a lead and we come up with nothing, usually because people are too afraid to talk. Your reader has a very simplistic view about organized crime: imagine if you are a young waitress at a Chinatown restaurant frequented by the mafia - you remember witnessing a group of gangsters having a meeting in your restaurant, you even brought food to their table. They even left you a nice tip for your service. The next day, the police go to the restaurant and question you, "did you see these gangsters? They are wanted criminals, who have committed some terrible crime, we want to arrest them."

What would the waitress do? What does she stand to gain by assisting the police? The police doesn't have any money to pay her for her co-operation, we can only rely on her having a desire to help us in our investigations. What does she stand to lose by assisting the police? Too much. What if her colleagues saw her being questioned by the police and when the mafia come back and demand, "who was the big mouth who told the police we were here?" She could possibly lose her job if her boss was afraid of her big mouth getting the restaurant into trouble with the mafia. If she told the police anything, then she could become a target for the mafia, the mafia may do something nasty to her - beat her up, rape her, even kill her - just to make an example of her, as a warning to anyone who thinks they can just go to the police and talk. The police cannot put everyone they speak to into witness protection, we question so many people everyday, take down so many witness statements - some of which may turn out to be vital, others totally irrelevant.

Would the waitress dare to open her mouth and speak to the police?

Therefore it is so much easier for the young Chinese waitress to just say, "I don't remember, I was so busy, there were so many customers that day, sorry I don't remember all of their faces." She has nothing to lose by pretending that she doesn't remember a thing, but she risks getting into a lot of trouble if she opens her mouth. I know when these people are lying when they say, "I'm sorry I don't remember." Many of the illegal immigrants whom we do arrest have surprisingly bad memories about the details of the people they work for - like they cannot remember names, dates, places, address, they somehow just 'forget' such basic details when I question them.

Peter: It's a simple issue of covering your tracks - if you are committing a multi-million dollar fraud case, you would have invested so much time and money into setting the whole thing up. You would not then be so stupid as to screw it all up by making a dumb mistake. There's this story I've heard, these robbers in America planned to rob a jewelry store and they made a fatal mistake, they parked their get-away car in a no parking zone and the car was towed away whilst they were robbing the jewelry store. When they ran out of the jewelry store with a bag full of gold and diamonds only to realize that their car was gone, they panicked and had to hijack a car to get away - but that lost them a few minutes. That was enough time for the police to catch up with them and after a short car chase, they were apprehended and put in jail for a long time. Those are the kinds of mistakes silly amateurs make when they try to rob a bank!

Only the amateurs get caught, the pros never get caught.

Let me state the obvious: criminals don't want to be caught, criminals don't want to go to jail. Only dumb criminals make stupid mistakes which results in them being arrested. These Chinese mafia are not dumb criminals who make amateur mistakes - take that Chinese restaurant for example, they know that every single one of the staff would not remember them having been there and if the police were to ask for CCTV, the manager would say, "oh I am so sorry we didn't keep the footage of the CCTV for that day as there was no incident." Every single one of the staff would 'forget' anything they saw that day - that's how powerful the mafia are in Chinatown, the people who work in the restaurant are terrified of them. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by helping the police - so why would they say anything to the police? They would have to put their own interests first, who wouldn't in such a situation?

Limpeh: Okay, so you say these criminals are super intelligent, they work hard, they pay great attention to details, they rarely ever make mistakes and they are meticulous. If they are so incredibly talented, why run the risk of being arrested and put in jail by being in the mafia when they can use these talents to get a normal job - be a banker, lawyer, businessman - and make loads of money legally if they are really so incredibly talented and resourceful? So many people can become rich without indulging in organized crime. Why do they turn to crime?

You can be a pastor of a church in Singapore and become super rich.

PO: Greed and power. You can make money very fast very quickly when you're involved in organized crime, some of their more successful businesses generate a vast amount of profits in a way that a tax paying legitimate would never. You don't need to play by the rules - take the example of buying luxury goods with cloned credit cards and then selling them on in the black market, they make huge profits because you're using someone else's money to buy those goods, effectively stealing them. Compare that to an honest shopkeeper who buys those goods from the wholesaler and then selling them at a slightly higher price and trying to make a small, modest profit, the honest way.

There's also a huge power trip for those in the mafia - people fear them, people offer them respect out of fear and they get what they want. This kind of power attracts a certain kind of character who get a kick out of making people scared of them. You should see the kind of abuse that illegal immigrants are subjected to at the hands of these gang leaders - men are beaten up, women are raped, sexually abused and to them it is all a power game. Also, it's not something ordinary people get into - nobody thinks, oh I will quit my job and go join an organized crime syndicate and work for the mafia. Often these people are sucked into it by their siblings, their friends, it was a part of their lives one way or another and what may seem extraordinary to you may be completely normal for them.

Money and power are the main motivations for those in the mafia.

Peter: Good jobs are hard to come by for young people - if you want to work for a good company like an investment bank or one of the top IT firms in the business, then you need to have a great degree, a great track record, everything needs to be excellent and if you don't have what it takes to get the attention of the HR department of these employers, then you're probably going to be condemned to a very mediocre job for not much money.  Times are hard and it is very competitive out there - so there's a certain amount of academic snobbery out there to keep out people who didn't go to the right schools, attended an elite university and had the right connections. It's a form of discrimination, many of the brighter young people may be intelligent but they still struggle to find a job.

These organized crime syndicates need well trained professionals like accountants and bankers as well. Perhaps the word 'gangsters' or 'mafia' conjure up the wrong image about organized crime, but some of the gangsters involved are extremely highly educated. It's not just mindless thugs you know. I know of this case where there was this crystal meth factory in Manchester run by a bunch of highly educated chemists who preferred to use their knowledge to produce illegal drugs than to work for the pharmaceutical industry because it paid more. Imagine if you're a young graduate desperately looking for a job after graduation and after the 100th rejection letter, you're willing to try anything out of sheer desperation if you're convinced that you're never going to find a decent job.

It is not easy to get a good job these days for young people.

Limpeh: So am I right to assume that I am surrounded by people involved in organized crime, it's just that they know how to fly under the radar, they do not draw attention to themselves?

PO: That's kinda correct. It's everywhere - but it doesn't affect everyone. It probably won't affect you personally.

Peter: It's not just in the movies you know, sometimes life is stranger than art. It's a part of modern society. The concept of the mafia or organized crime wasn't invented by some Hollywood screenwriter or some imaginative novelist you know, it's the other way around in this case: the art is reflecting an aspect of real life in our society.

Limpeh: Perhaps I am naive in thinking this, but one would have thought that with modern crime solving techniques in this day and age, the police would be able to catch those involved in organized crime more easily?

PO: The technology is there - but it has helped both the criminals and the police, technology does not discriminate. The criminals have used technology to their advantage as well. Then there's also the aspect of crime that has nothing to do with technology - corruption: everywhere in the world, the mafia has often infiltrated the local police through the simple means of bribery. It's simply a case of giving a police officer a big brown envelop full of money so he will look the other way - so that part of the equation has not changed at all and probably will never change with time.

Peter: I think you've watched too much TV and movies - things are a lot messier in real life, y'know?

Limpeh: Guys, thank you so much for talking to me. It has been most interesting for me to learn from you.

As usual, please feel free to let me know your thoughts on the issue by leaving a comment below, thank you for reading!