Organized crime
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Organized crime or 'criminal organizations are groups or operations run by criminals, most commonly for the purpose of generating a monetary profit.
Typical activities
Organized crime theft and fraud activities often victimize businesses, by hijacking cargo trucks, robbing goods, committing bankruptcy fraud (also known as "bust-out"), insurance fraud or stock fraud (inside trading). Organized crime groups also victimize individuals by car theft (either for dismantling at "Chop shops" or for export), burglary, credit card fraud, and stock fraud ("pump and dump" scam). Some organized crime groups defraud national, state, or local governments by bid-rigging public projects, counterfeiting money, smuggling or manufacturing untaxed alcohol (bootlegging) or cigarettes (buttlegging), and providing immigrant workers to avoid taxes.
Organized crime groups also provide a range of illegal services and goods, such as loansharking of money at very high interest rates, bookmaking and gambling, prostitution, drug trafficking, gunrunning, providing murder for hire, illegal dumping of toxic waste, people smuggling and trafficking in human beings . Organized crime groups also do a range of business and labor racketeering activities, such as casino skimming, Insider trading, setting up monopolies in industries such as garbage collecting and cement pouring, bid rigging, getting "no-show" and "no-work" jobs, using non-union labor and pocketing the wage difference, money laundering, political corruption, and bullying.
See also