Brazilian crooks are using stolen cellphones to coordinate the actions of underage crooks and create dead-end double-blinds that can't be traced by the cops. The crooks recruit a roper and hand him a parcel of stolen mobiles; then the roper recruits a gang of children and distributes the phones to them. The crook finds a target — a tourist in a hotel — and calls his roper, who deploys the children to swarm the tourist and rip him off, and then uses the cellphone to arrange for a dead-drop for the loot. If a kid is caught, he can only point to the roper; the roper only has a bogus cellphone number for the crook — everyone gets off scott-free.
Xenky's sources say that similar uses of "swarm" architectures are becoming more common in online Web attacks, forming meeting times and exact locations for terrorists, and arranging narcotics transfers.
Law enforcement organizations in Brazil and elsewhere are facing more "social" crime that is enabled by wireless devices, network connections, and a highly-distributed approach to planning, executing, and sharing the "loot" from a crime.
(via Smart Mobs)
