The Dark Mafia: Organized Crime in the Age of the Internet

This book explores how organized crime has adapted and evolved in sync with ever-expanding technologies to update its popular image and to conduct its covert operations. It shows how organized crime operates in dark virtual spaces and how it can now form a dynamic interactive system with legitimate online spaces, solidifying its criminal exploits and resources, and making them attractive to a new generation of computer users. Focusing on Italian Mafias, Russian and Georgian criminal groups and drug cartels, and Asian crime syndicates such as Yakuza and Triads, this book aims to describe and explain the reasons behind the continuity of online and offline crime, taking into consideration whether or not internet culture has radically changed the way we perceive organized crime and if so how, and thus how the shift in popular imagery that the internet has brought about affects its actual illegal activities. We also consider how organized crime has shifted its locale from the physical to the virtual, how cybercrime has allowed criminal organizations to adapt and reinvent themselves, and how the police now use technology against organized crime.

To better understand the new generation of criminals, it is becoming increasingly urgent to understand the latest technologies and how criminals utilize them. The Dark Mafia is an engaging and accessible introduction to understanding virtual organized crime. It will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, policing, and all those interested in the digital age of organized crime.

這本書探討了有組織犯罪如何與不斷擴展的科技同步適應和更新其受歡迎形象，以及進行隱密行動。它展示了有組織犯罪如何在黑暗的虛擬空間中運作，以及如何與合法的線上空間形成一個動態互動系統，鞏固其犯罪行為和資源，並使其對新一代電腦使用者具有吸引力。本書聚焦於意大利黑手黨、俄羅斯和格魯吉亞犯罪集團、毒品卡特爾，以及亞洲犯罪組織如日本黑幫和三合會，旨在描述和解釋網絡犯罪的持續性原因，並考慮互聯網文化是否徹底改變了我們對有組織犯罪的認知方式，以及這種轉變如何影響其實際非法活動所帶來的受歡迎形象的改變。我們還考慮了有組織犯罪如何將其活動場所從實體轉移到虛擬空間，以及網絡犯罪如何使犯罪組織能夠適應和重新發明自己，以及警方如何利用技術對抗有組織犯罪。

為了更好地了解新一代犯罪分子，了解最新的技術以及犯罪分子如何利用它們變得越來越迫切。《黑暗黑手黨》是一本引人入勝且易於理解的介紹虛擬有組織犯罪的書籍。它將吸引犯罪學、社會學、警務學的學生和學者，以及所有對有組織犯罪的數字時代感興趣的人。

Antonio Nicaso is an internationally recognized organized crime expert, who has published more than 40 books on Mafia and Mafia-like criminal organizations, including Bad Blood, which inspired a major television series. He teaches Social History of Organized Crime and Mafia Culture and the Power of Symbols, Rituals and Myth at Queen's University, Canada.

Marcel Danesi is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, where he taught a course on Forensic Semiotics for many years. He has authored Organized Crime: A Cultural Introduction (Routledge, 2021) along with Antonio Nicaso.

Antonio Nicaso是一位國際知名的組織犯罪專家，已出版超過40本關於黑手黨和類似犯罪組織的書籍，其中包括《Bad Blood》，該書啟發了一部重要的電視劇集。他在加拿大皇后大學教授組織犯罪的社會歷史以及黑手黨文化和符號、儀式和神話的力量。

Marcel Danesi是多倫多大學的人類學名譽教授，多年來一直教授法醫符號學課程。他與Antonio Nicaso合著了《組織犯罪：文化導論》（Routledge，2021）。