New Report Highlights Growing Organized Crime Threats through AI, Cyber Technology
Last week, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) released its annual Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) which highlighted the evolving nature of organized criminal threats that are sweeping Europe and other major countries, including the United States. The analysis by Europol – the EU’s official law enforcement collective that supports its 27 Member States in their fight against serious international crime and terrorism – is based on financial intelligence and investigative data acquired from its various constituents along with international law enforcement partners, and examines both the current state of organized criminal activity and also forecasts future threats. Since its inception, this report, which is released every four years, has historically helped to guide European law enforcement and politicians towards establishing improved regulatory frameworks and protocols leading to increased criminal prosecution, and have culminated in tangible improvements in their respective abilities to hinder these illicit activities overall. However, the threats posed during this new age of technological advancement are arguably more pervasive than ever before, with organized criminal groups altering their very DNA towards digitalization given the wealth of new avenues available to them to bankroll their operations.
The growth in adoption of technology in this space – particularly with respect to the very artificial intelligence (AI) processes that financial institutions and law enforcement agencies have used to combat these threats over the past decade – are transforming the way crimes are organized, executed, and concealed, making them all the more dangerous and destabilizing. Unfortunately for the world powers who have attempted to counter illicit financial activity over this period, Europol finds that serious organized crime as a whole is growing at an unprecedented pace, exploiting new technologies, digital platforms, and geopolitical instability to expand its reach and deepen its impact.1 Further compounding the crisis at hand is the fact that the reach of these activities now encompasses far more than what has historically been the primary motivator for their activities: direct financial gains. These destabilizing activities now carry far greater weight into the political and social realms, with the 2025 report finding the actions of these organizations often serve to drive the geopolitical interests of either those they support, or those orchestrating these activities at the global scale.
The foundation of organized criminal activities has been heavily altered on both internal and external levels over the past several years. Yet while these activities continue to advance in both skill and sophistication, organized crime still relies most heavily on laundering of ill-gotten profits to finance and ultimately expand their operations. Europol writes that the most lucrative criminal markets generate billions of illicit proceeds on an annual basis, yet virtually all still depend on money laundering to conceal the sources of illegally obtained funds. Whereas organized criminal operations have historically carried mostly local and regional impacts (with primary fundraising efforts including drug trafficking and weapons sales, smuggling and theft), these groups have now identified the profit potential tied to new, far-reaching avenues brought about in the modern age, including various forms of online fraud, and have begun to explore these channels accordingly.
The SOCTA identifies three defining characteristics of today’s serious and organized crime landscape that differentiate it from any previous point in history. These include:
- Crime Becoming Increasingly Destabilizing
- Crime Being Nurtured Online, and
- Crime Being Accelerated by AI and emerging technologies
The exploitation of the digital infrastructure that supports virtually all walks of society in 2025 has allowed for criminal networks to operate with increasing efficiency and anonymity. While dark web activities remain a key cog in criminal operations, social media and e-commerce scams have also provided new means of fundraising for these enterprises that appeal to a much larger audience. Furthermore, the ability to communicate and organize their operations remotely (and often across national and international borders) has further contributed to increased reach and translated to greater success for these enterprises. All told, the evolution of web-based technologies have drastically altered the prowess of current criminal threats. The emergence of AI and other new technologies that previously played no role in organized crime have now completely transformed their practices, allowing criminal networks to leverage their capabilities across a wide spectrum of crimes. Europol cites the ability of the modern criminal to now craft messages in multiple languages, target victims with precision on a global scale, create sophisticated malware, and even produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM) – once timely and costly processes – all with just a few clicks of a mouse.1 The report notes adds that delving into synthetic media, including “deepfakes” – a trend highlighted by Global RADAR in December 2024 – has further amplified fraud exploits, as well as extortion, and identity theft on behalf of bad actors. With respect to finance, the continued emergence of blockchain technologies and the expansion of cryptocurrency markets has too been leveraged for the purposes of facilitating clandestine payments and laundering proceeds of destabilizing activities, generally via the misuse of decentralized systems and unregulated exchanges.1
One new trend identified in this report however poses perhaps the most significant destabilizing effects to European Union Member States and their transnational counterparts, that being criminal networks becoming proxies for hybrid threat actors. Europol writes that hybrid threats encompass a range of criminal activities and tactics, such as sabotage of critical infrastructure through digital or physical means, information theft, disinformation campaigns, cyber-attacks, migrant smuggling, certain types of drugs trafficking and other forms of crime.1 Further, changes in the global geopolitical climate – including increasing tensions between world powers seen recently – can culminate in increased vulnerabilities that hybrid threat actors can and have already exploited for personal gain. The growing relationship seen between organized criminal organizations in Europe and abroad with independent, skilled threat actors is mutually beneficial, with the parties leveraging each other’s resources (and often protections) to achieve their goals. The scary part is that through this partnership, organized criminal operations are often granted access to highly-sophisticated tools that can further assist in facilitating their money laundering efforts or larger-scale fraudulent activities – including data theft, ransomware and hacking exploits that can impact individuals and entire organizations.
The opaque financial ecosystem developed as a result of these activities undermines the licit financial system in Europe and across the rest of the globe. As such, identifying and thwarting these criminal webs remains the key objective for international law enforcement bodies as a result. Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle has emphasized the urgency of the current situation, citing the findings of the report as a wake-up call for law enforcement to improve global financial security to better protect the interests of current and future generations. The ability of international law enforcement and anti-crime agencies to interrupt the resources available to criminal organizations remains the most effective means of limiting the spread of these activities. While recovering assets from crimes that have already been committed remains challenging – specifically as cryptocurrencies and digital assets continue to be utilized with increasing prevalence in this field – the ability of the parties at hand to identify current trends in the respective realms of organized and financial crime remains paramount in 2025 and beyond.
Europol’s 2025 report can be read in its entirety here.
Citations
“The Changing DNA of Serious and Organised Crime.” Europol, Mar. 2025.