Controlling Cyber-Crime and Gambling: Problems and Paradoxes in the Mediation of Law and Criminal Organization

This paper studies the relationship between criminal organization and social control in the area of computer crime. We examine a cyber-crime scheme that defrauded electronic gambling machines in Canada and focus on the connection between the rationality of crime and the specific structures of social control: opportunities for fraud, crime prevention, law enforcement, and punishment. We describe the cyber-attack techniques and organization and ask how did a criminal network manage problems of property protection, security and surveillance, and relations with industry and government enforcement officials? We argue that the translation of legal control and security into a practical enforcement activity had unintended consequences that enabled rather than disabled the social organization of video lottery fraud, allowing it to operate routinely and successfully.