The Evolving Nature Of Financial Crime With The Increase Of Internet Capabilities. Challenge Identification, Legal Considerations And Policy Recommendations

As every industry benefitted from emerging technological advancements, so too have emerging frontiers of dark payments. Remarkably, the sophistication of money laundering and terrorism financing has evolved through internet protocols and cryptographic technologies in the 21st century. The manner, degree, depth and breadth of emerging, innovative, and infrastructural sophistication released new capabilities which deploy effective high-level command coordination to leverage regulatory confusions and operational frustrations in the current crypto arms race.

Consequently, criminal enterprises leverage resourceful mechanisms and target(s) allocation to deploy techniques on the darknet in carrying out illicit activities through high-fault-tolerance blockchain capabilities. This thesis seeks to establish joint operational considerations, doctrinal legal scrutiny, and counter-intelligence cyber warfare to strike effective choke points on pressure points concerning hyper-velocity cross-border multi-jurisdictional cryptographic phenomena. In doing so, private enterprises can engage in safe and innovative market capitalizations, public bodies can regulate to minimize unintended consequences, and law enforcement/intelligence can apply maximum aggressive pressure to effectively blunt, misuse and abuse of emerging technologies in the context of disastrous and evolving illicit operational commands.