‘They Won’t Present as Crooks’: How Organised Crime Gangs Infiltrate Businesses

This exclusive interview with Geoff White was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.

Financial crime networks no longer operate in neat silos. State-backed hackers, money launderers, fraudsters and organised crime gangs increasingly work across borders, while those targeting businesses may appear indistinguishable from legitimate customers.

Geoff White is a cyber security speaker and award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared across the BBC, Channel 4 News and The Sunday Times. He co-created and presented the BBC World Service podcast The Lazarus Heist and has written three books examining cybercrime and modern organised crime.

In this exclusive interview with the Cyber Security Speakers Agency, Geoff reveals how global crime networks collaborate, explains why cryptocurrency remains attractive to money launderers and sets out how leaders should prepare for a major hack.

Q1. You have investigated criminal networks across the world. What genuinely shocked you most about the way they operate?

Geoff White: “The thing about the global crime networks that I investigate is they cover all different territories. I look into financial crime, fraudsters, money launderers, computer hackers and nation-state cyber teams.

“You tend to think that these people might be quite separate, that they might work in silos. But actually, what you see in these organised crime enterprises is massive crossover.

“You get government agents working with bedroom computer hackers. You get money launderers working with drug gangs across the world and Kremlin influencers.

“That’s the interesting thing: you’re seeing this confluence, this coming together of all these different criminal and illicit type of elements.”

Q2. What is the biggest financial crime threat that people in boardrooms are still underestimating?

Geoff White: “I think when it comes to financial crime, a lot of boards and senior people in organisations still have this idea that if there’s somebody who’s going to do something dodgy within your organisation or to your organisation, they will turn up wearing a balaclava and a leather jacket on a motorbike. They will look like a criminal.

“Actually, what’s happening is the criminals and the organised crime gangs behind this are getting increasingly smart at presenting like normal customers.

“We’re seeing this at the moment. To a certain extent, the controversy around Jeffrey Epstein is part of that. For a lot of people who worked with him, Jeffrey Epstein just seemed like a very rich, very charismatic person. He didn’t present as somebody who was as evil as he turned out to be.

“It’s the same with organised crime gangs. These people know your policies. They know your organisation. They know your staff, and that’s how they’ll get in. They won’t present as crooks.”

Q3. Crypto has survived every prediction of its demise. Is it an innovation opportunity or a money-laundering superhighway?

Geoff White: “Cryptocurrency has certainly been on a journey, and regardless what you think of crypto and Bitcoin and Tether and all these other things, it’s resilient.

“I’ve read Bitcoin’s obituary year after year, and it’s still here. It’s still going strong, and we’re starting to see adoption. In the UK and the US, you’re looking at something like 10% of people owning some of these crypto assets. It’s not going away.

“In terms of whether it’s positive, whether it’s a threat, it’s a bit of both. Certainly, it allows massive innovation, and the blockchain that sits behind it is also starting to be used in some really interesting ways.

“But because it sits outside the financial system, because it’s largely unregulated and parts of crypto are resistant to regulation, parts of the industry don’t want to be regulated, what that allows is massive gaps for criminals, nation-state hackers and money launderers to drive a truck through.

“That is still happening. We’re still seeing amounts in the hundreds of millions being laundered via crypto.”

Q4. When a company suffers a major fraud or hack, which leadership failure is most often exposed?

Geoff White: “When these big hacks happen, the thing that really surprises me is the extent to which it seems that the victim organisation hasn’t thought through what they would do when it happens.

“Unfortunately, increasingly, it’s a case of when, not if. You can have the best protection in the world, but if you’ve got an organised crime gang, hacking group who are crawling all over you, they will find a way in.

“That’s their 24/7 job. You’re going to fall victim. Unfortunately, that’s the message.

“You have to get ahead of that and think: if and when it happens, what are we going to do? What’s our messaging going to be like? Where is our sensitive data? What kinds of sensitive data have we got? What’s our approach to being held for ransom by a ransomware gang? And how we going to explain this to our internal people, to our stakeholders and our partners and our customers, and also to the general public?

“You’ve got to have a plan for that because if you don’t, you’re going to be caught with your pants down when it happens.”

Q5. What do you want people to take back to their organisations after hearing you speak?

Geoff White: “When I do talks for people, I’m really lucky. As a journalist, I have these amazing stories.

“Regardless of how techy this all gets and how financial crime might seem to be spreadsheets, it’s not. It’s always people.

“There’s always a set of characters at the back of this who are interesting, sometimes crazy, sometimes extremely quirky people.

“That’s what I do. I look at the people and their motivations. Then we look at how they work. Then we look at the lessons organisations need to learn to fight against these people.

“What I hope people come out with after my talks is, firstly, a thumping good story, but secondly, some really valuable and applicable lessons that they can start putting in place to stop the bad guys winning.”