Cybercrime and virtual offender convergence settings

摘要

Felson coined the term ‘offender convergence settings’ to describe certain physical locations, e.g. local tough bars, in which (potential) offenders meet each other. Here they relax with friends and acquaintances, meet new people, exchange information, sell stolen material or plan new criminal acts. The perpetrators of cybercrime also make use of such locations, albeit digitally in so-called virtual forums. From a law enforcement point of view, both types of settings should be suppressed. However, a physical location is easier closed down than a virtual one. This is because the virtual forum is often situated in countries that will not cooperate with requests to take down servers. This could be considered as an advantage for the offender. But virtual forums also have specific disadvantages. Every contact and discussion is digitally preserved for those who know where to look. A law enforcement agency was able to take such a look in one particular forum. This revealed over 150,000 postings by 1,846 members. More importantly, these postings disclosed crime scripts as criminals themselves see it. It turns out that hacking accounts and stealing money is not their biggest problem. What is a risk, however, is not leaving traces when wiring the money into other accounts. This article tries to translate such insights in policy recommendations.