Inside the Criminal Networks Blurring the Lines Between Cybercrime, Crypto and Financial Fraud

Interview By Tabish Ali

Financial crime is becoming harder for businesses to detect as organised crime, cybercrime, cryptocurrency and state-linked actors increasingly overlap.

Europol’s latest assessment of Europe’s most threatening criminal networks points to the growing use of cybercrime, cryptocurrencies, digital platforms and legitimate business structures to move and conceal illicit funds.

Geoff White is an award-winning investigative journalist and author specialising in cybercrime, financial crime and technology. He has worked with the BBC, Channel 4 News and The Sunday Times, and is the author of Crime Dot Com, The Lazarus Heist and Rinsed.

In this interview with the Champions Speakers Agency, Geoff examines how criminal networks are evolving, where boards remain exposed, crypto’s role in illicit finance and the leadership failures that surface when major fraud or cyberattacks hit.

From your investigations into international financial crime, what does the convergence of organised crime, cyber actors and state-linked networks tell us about how these threats are evolving?

Geoff White: “The thing about the global crime networks that I investigate is they cover all different territories. So, I look into financial crime frauders, money launderers, computer hackers, nation state cyber teams, and you tend to think that these people might be quite separate, that they might work in silos.

“But actually, what you see in these organised crime enterprises is massive crossover. You get government agents working with bedroom computer hackers. You get money launderers working with drug gangs across the world and Kremlin influencers.

“That’s the interesting thing, is you’re seeing this confluence, this coming together of all these different criminal and illicit type of elements.”

Where are boards and senior leadership teams still most exposed when it comes to recognising and responding to sophisticated financial crime?

Geoff White: “I think when it comes to financial crime, a lot of boards and senior people in organisations still have this idea that if there’s somebody who’s going to do something dodgy within your organisation or to your organisation, they will turn up wearing a balaclava and a leather jacket on a motorbike, you know, they will look like a criminal.

“Actually, what’s happening is the criminals and the organised crime gangs behind this are getting increasingly smart at presenting like normal customers. And we’re seeing this at the moment. I mean, to a certain extent, the controversy around Jeffrey Epstein is part of that. 

“For a lot of people who worked with him, Jeffrey Epstein just seemed like a very rich, very charismatic person. He didn’t present as somebody who was as evil as he turned out to be.

“It’s the same with organised crime gangs. These people know your policies. They know your organisation. They know your staff, and that’s how they’ll get in. They won’t present as crooks.”

As crypto moves further into the mainstream, how should business leaders assess the tension between its commercial potential and its role in facilitating illicit finance?

Geoff White: “Well, cryptocurrency has certainly been on a journey and regardless of what you think of crypto and Bitcoin and Tether and all these other things, it’s resilient. You know, I’ve read Bitcoin’s obituary for year after year and it’s still here. It’s still going strong and we’re starting to see adoption.

“I mean, in the UK, in the US, you’re looking at something like 10% of people owning some of these crypto assets. So, it’s not going away.

“In terms of whether it’s positive, whether it’s a threat, well, it’s a bit of both. I mean, certainly it allows massive innovation and the blockchain that sits behind it is also starting to be used in some really, really interesting ways.

“But because it sits outside the financial system, because it’s largely unregulated and parts of crypto are resistant to regulation, parts of the industry don’t want to be regulated, what that allows is massive gaps for criminals, for nation state hackers, money launderers to drive a truck through.

“That is still happening. We’re still seeing amounts in the hundreds of millions being laundered via crypto.”

When a major fraud, cyberattack or ransomware incident hits, which leadership and governance failures tend to become most visible?

Geoff White: “When these big hacks happen, the thing that really surprises me is the extent to which it seems that the victim organisation hasn’t thought through what they would do when it happens.

“Unfortunately, increasingly, it’s a case of when, not if. You can have the best protection in the world, but if you’ve got an organised crime gang, hacking group who are crawling all over you, they will find a way in. You know, that’s their 24/7 job. You’re going to fall victim. Unfortunately, that’s the message.

“So, you have to get ahead of that and think, right, if and when it happens, what are we going to do? What’s our messaging going to be like? Where is our sensitive data? What kinds of sensitive data have we got? What’s our approach to being held for ransom by a ransomware gang? And how are we going to explain this to our internal people, to our stakeholders and our partners and our customers, and also to the general public?

“You’ve got to have a plan for that because if you don’t, you’re going to be caught with your pants down when it happens.”