In 2021 investigators in South Africa received a tip that a Vietnamese organized crime ring was operating out of a local farm. When they raided the property, they found more than 800 pounds of lion \u201ccake\u201d\u2014a traditional medicine product made by boiling lion bones to remove the gelatin from joints. The investigators also found 13 gallons of opium that the suspects had been adding to their lion cake.<\/p>\n
Illegal wildlife trade<\/a> is a multibillion-dollar industry carried out by organized criminal gangs with operations spanning continents. Now new research in the Journal of Economic Criminology confirms that those same gangs are also frequently involved in other forms of criminal activity<\/a>, including trafficking in drugs, arms, people, stolen vehicles, mined resources, counterfeit goods and human body parts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing criminal networks around the world being more adaptable and interconnected and almost commodity agnostic,\u201d says study lead author Michelle Anagnostou, a University of Oxford researcher of illegal wildlife trade who conducted the research while a PhD student at the University of Waterloo in Canada. This points to the need for \u201ca comprehensive organized crime approach to trafficking activities as a whole, with less focus on the commodity being trafficked,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter]<\/a><\/p>\n Experts in wildlife crime<\/a> have long suspected a link with other kinds of criminality, but the new findings provide robust evidence that confirms that connection and elucidates the many forms it takes. Anagnostou carried out 112 interviews with sources in South Africa, Hong Kong and Canada who deal directly with crime<\/a>, including wildlife officers, national and local police officers, customs agents, intelligence analysts, and experts in organized crime<\/a>, money laundering and drugs.<\/p>\n