A look back over a century of crime and how the world was marked by its escalation at various times .

“CRIME OF THE CENTURY”
By Paul Mc Cann

In this article about the crime of the century , my intention is not to glorify crime , or to encourage in any sense of the word , crime . Some people over the years may have been forced into a life of crime while many others choose themselves to commit an offence . Unfortunately crime is a part of life , and life has been
the cost at times for both criminal and victim . In the end criminals end up with no where to run and no place to hide , usually locked up behind bars , doing time .
Between good and bad a borderline is drawn . During the twentieth century a lot of people have crossed over that
line and committed crime .
In this article I’d like to mention some of the known crimes of the century and leave the question open , what was the crime of the century ?

During a brief study of police reports made during the century from various sources including files at Scotland Yard , the F.B.I.
and Interpol , I noticed one crime kept occurring every decade of this century . The nature of this crime was counterfeiting . So it appears this century was full of fakes .
At the beginning of the twentieth century the international criminal had everything going for him with light restrictions
placed on borders and the police really had no authority outside their own national frontiers . This gave rise to an international smuggling and counterfeiting operation .

At the turn of the century another nature of crime that seemed popular was committed by pick pockets . Some poor people had
turned to crime as a means of survival but paid the price for their crime . Its worth mentioning here that in Germany in the early twenties victims of severe crime where the poor , hungry , and gullible . A spiralling inflation saw a box of matches cost one thousand million marks at one stage . As the ruthless militants waged on with their international crime in Germany , the working class , middle class and the professional sides of society suffered as their investments , insurances , and pensions had been wiped out .


During the troubled twenties Ireland had its fair share of crime
with hold ups , arson , and smuggling . Because of the unrest in Ireland , law enforcement was difficult and many crimes that had been committed often went without an arrest being made .

As fake British bank notes began to appear in all parts of Europe a Geneva conference commission had been set up to
determine ways in which police could track down and capture the counterfeit rings . New methods of capturing criminals began to emerge as names on international wanted lists accompanied by posters began to appear in newspapers , magazines , and where also seen plastered up on walls all around Europe .

During the second world war theft of bicycles in Norway was growing . A list of records show that 1156 reports had been made .
Many of the art treasures hat where stolen during the second world war have never been recovered .
In 1943 fake paintings of the great English masters had appeared for sale in Olso . They where forged by an out of work actor .

A plan was put together during the war to bring the British economy to its knees . “Operation Bernhart ” was to flood
the world with counterfeit British currency to bring about a collapse in the British economy . The German government manufactured 330 million pounds of fake British bank notes ,
and put their plan to action , but the scheme fizzed out without a bang . However the Germans did use some of the fake bank notes to pay off their spies in a smart double cross move .

In another report made through Interpol it states that in 1944
a Postman and swindler from Belgium stole 100,000 Belgian Francs from several people .
The black market was a playground for crooks during the war .
Some shopkeepers were guilty of stealing ration books from their customers and the trade of bartering for certain items like soap , spuds , tea , and razor blades was criminal .


During the sixties the great train robbery occurred .
A new style “ sky-jacking” was a popular device used .

A report shows between 1967 and 1970 an assistant bank manager from Japan defrauded his employees of 1,900 million Yen . His accomplice was a company director who would submit forged bills of exchange to the bank which where accepted by the bank who knew they were forged . The two crooks where arrested in 1970 in Hong Kong and Paris .

Drug trafficking had grown to be the major crime during the eighties and nineties . The business is very sophisticated and usually comes with a money back guarantee , whereas if anything goes wrong and a seizure is made the customer is not
charged . To get drugs into countries was becoming more difficult with customs aware of the many items used to transport the deadly trade into other countries . Drug runners using small plastic bags would swallow their allotment and eventually pass it from their body after walking through airport customs . At times the risk of a bag bursting was high and some of these desperate men died of an overdose . Bags of heroin had also been found inside frozen fish that where being exported by container loads . The motor car export business was also used to get drugs into other countries packing cars with bags of illegal contraband .

A report through Scotland Yard states that in 1978 over two tons of Cannabis was seized in a sea going motor vessel in British waters .

Another report lists two Dutchmen on a KLM flight from Bankok to Vienna had been discovered to have had 17.9 kilos of heroin in their luggage . A major cocaine seizure was
made in February 1990 when 2,552 kilos of the drug where
taken from a warehouse in the Dutch town of Ijmuiden .
The cocaine was concealed in 115 barrels of deep-frozen passion juice imported in two sea going containers from Colombia .
This was the largest cocaine seizure to date made in Europe worth an estimated street value of the eighty million pounds .

Heroin represents the “old money’ in the world trade against the “new money” of the cocaine barons .
In the United States in September 1989 the biggest seizure of cocaine in history was made when 20,000 kilos of the drug worth an estimated 7 Billion dollars was discovered in a warehouse outside Los Angeles the police also discovered 10 million dollars in cash from earlier sales .
The nineties have more and more younger addicts who are buying doses of hard narcotics . The escalation in the manufacture of man- made synthetic drugs in the nineties is frightening . For example seizures of Amphetamines in Britain in 1991 increased an incredible 3,500% .
There can be no mistake that in the nineties police corruption does exist , on the other hand many police officers do not take bribes , sadly some of these end up dead . Its common knowledge today with criminals in the drug trade , you can never say never.

Other crimes that stem from the drug trade today are money laundering , white collar and computer crime .
Organised crime has riddled itself throughout the world .
Modern white slave trade is also rampant in the nineties .
Art thefts have also rekindled the passion of the criminal mind .
With crime on the increase the question must be asked what can we look forward to in the next millennium ?
Well the answer lies with the technology that exists today .
There is a greater ability to capture a criminal , and monitor
a possible crime before it happens . The aspects of fighting crime is always a concern . These days more and more violent crimes have started to appear , these included bashings , and domestic violence . When a crime can be exposed , it can be cut out
from society . The problem is the crime that can’t be seen or detected . Such is the nature of todays computer crime in the and it is a major concern to the authorities world wide .
For in a world without borders like that on a global website,
international criminals have all the chips stacked in their favour .
With crime one thing is common in most cases . Crime is not
an easy way of life for those on the run , and all those who are caught do pay .
THE END

By Paul Mc Cann