Crime Exponentiation is a Wicked Problem

• In Event: Understanding Online Fraud in Today's Cyber Landscape

Abstract

Crime Exponentiation is a condition whereby advancements in technology lead to evolutions in crime that outpace our ability to conceptualize and respond to them. This is happening in three ways. First, technology is simplifying criminal techniques so more individuals can offend (crime accessibility). Second, it is increasing the amount of crime in which any one individual can engage (crime productivity). Third, it is introducing new forms of crime we have not seen before or changes the nature of traditional crime execution (crime diversification). These attributes render crime exponentiation what philosophers and economists refer to as a “Wicked Problem.” We identify an emerging form of criminality to demonstrate these characteristics of crime exponentiation: the Cyberindustirialization of intimacy-based fraud and catfishing, which is perpetrated by commercial organizations employing enterprise platforms, AI, and machine learning to expand fraud massively across international boundaries. Our data comes from online testimonials and interviews with victims and perpetrators of this form of criminality which represents a new form of the offender/victim overlap and goes unmeasured in traditional crime statistics.

Authors

• Volkan Topalli, Georgia State University

• Fangzhou Wang, University of Texas at Arlington