1 Transnational Organised Cyber Crime: Distinguishing Threat from Reality By Rob McCusker 1 „Will we see the emergence of cybercrime cartels?‟ 2 Abstract Cybercrime has become an integral part of the transnational threat landscape and conjures up pressing images of nefarious and increasingly complex online activity. More recently, the concept of „organised crime‟ has been attributed to cybercriminality. There has been subsequent disagreement and confusion concerning whether such crime is a derivation of traditional organised crime or an evolution of such crime within the online space. This opaque state of affairs has been exacerbated by the relative lack of clear evidence attesting to and supporting either scenario. Technological advances have always been used to the advantage of the criminal fraternity. The crucial question that remains is whether those advances have merely facilitated the commission of physical crime or whether in fact they have led to the creation of a new wave of traditional, but virtual, organised crime. Introduction In broad terms, the debate surrounding the actual and/or prospective involvement of traditional organised crime groups in cybercriminal activity is characterised by a tension between logic and pragmatism. Logic would dictate that traditional organised crime groups will engage with cybercriminal endeavours as fervently as they will with any low risk, high profit non-virtual criminal activity. Pragmatism on the other hand would suggest that it remains questionable whether such groups either need that engagement or indeed have the capacity to exploit the cyber environment to the extent that their capital investment would produce the desired and appropriate financial gains. Defining ‘cybercrime’ Yar 3 argues that „[i]t has become more or less obligatory to begin any discussion of “cybercrime” by referring to the most dramatic criminological quandary it raises, namely, does it denote the emergence of a “new” form of crime and/or criminality?‟ Grabosky 4 sought at a relatively early juncture to address that question by suggesting that cybercrime was simply a case of „old wine in new bottles‟, that is „…less a question of something completely different than a recognizable crime committed in a completely different way.‟ In a similar vein, Nisbett 5 has argued that „[c]yber crime is on the increase. This does not necessarily mean that there are in fact any new crimes; rather there are new methods of committing existing crimes and better ways of