With hard times come hard criminal activities. Bands of roving thieves are stealing more products and merchandise than ever before and demanding ransom for lives, too. You can find them in pirate ships off of Somalia, or on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
It seems that even though authorities are successful in taking some off of the streets (and water), new recruits quickly take their places and the illegal activity just continues to grow.
Most of these groups of bandits are into drug dealing as their first source of income. Indeed, many countries have “better and more important work to do” rather than cracking down on the drug trade. In fact, if the flow of money were clearer, the leaders of third world nations are filling their own pockets with blood-tainted drug money.
But, fortunately, the effort of the United States DEA and local police agencies has made it more difficult for them to make money. Often, they turn to other methods including extortion, kidnapping for ransom and even bank robbery.
Now, these thieves have added another way to add to their ill-gotten gain: cargo theft. The reason that this is becoming more common is because there is a low risk / high reward payoff. (more…)
