Financial Crime Scripting: Understanding Profit-Driven Crime

• In Event: Parallel Economy

Abstract

Organized crime causes severe damage to society. In the fight against these types of crimes, Dutch law enforcement agencies strive for an intelligence-led policing style. One approach to do this is to implement the crime script analysis, introduced by Cornish in 1994. Crime scripting is a method to understand and combat organized crime. In addition to intelligence-led policing, financial investigations are becoming an increasingly crucial component in the fight against crime. However, these two developments have not been brought together. In other words, most of the crime scripts regarding organized crime – where generating profit often is one of the constitutive elements – lack a financial perspective. To strengthen this financial approach, it is essential to integrate financial aspects into crime scripts. This study aims to incorporate these financial components into the crime scripting methodology. Within the project, we will provide an overview of existing crime scripts that include financial elements first. Next, we will develop crime scripts for four different use cases. The use cases are ATM robberies, manure fraud, corruption-as-a-service, and money-laundering-as-a-service. Finally, financial components will be integrated into each crime script, based on a range of sources, including case files and expert interviews. Through this study, we provide tools for creating a financial crime script. This method can be used to generate financial intelligence, hence, supporting intelligence-led policing, leading to identifying and selecting intervention strategies. In this presentation we will explain the concept of financial crime scripting and conduct an in-depth analysis of one of the four use cases.

Authors

• Marga Kooistra, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Thom Snaphaan, Avans University of Applied Sciences & Ghent University