Vice Series: The evolving business of crime

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Crime doesn’t resemble the old days. A deepfake of your voice can be used to convince a relative you need money. AI bots are capable of colluding in financial markets. There are seemingly countless new strategies of making data breaches more common. This week on The Indicator from Planet Money, we bring you five episodes digging into the evolving business of crime.


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Transcript

Rain pounds against the window of Detective Billy Hull's small-town office.

He rubs his temples and slicks down his whiskey.

Crooked cops, bed jobs.

It's rough out there.

They say every crime's got a story, and every story's got a sucker.

Detective Hull, I need your help.

I got in too deep at the numbers racket, and now I marched.

The mob's on my tail.

So the mob's running numbers again, huh?

Well, hot tamale, could you give me a hand here?

I've been out of that tune for a while.

Crime doesn't resemble the old days anymore.

Today's crime smells like synthetic drugs, data breaches, deep fakes.

All right, kid.

I can help you.

But first, I'm gonna need to listen to like five podcast episodes.

This coming week, The Indicator from Planet Money brings you a week of episodes on the evolving business of crime.