889 articles
Comando Vermelho
Comando Vermelho (Red Command, CV), Brazil's oldest criminal organization, founded in 1979 in the Ilha Grande Cândido Mendes prison through contact between common and political prisoners; based in Rio de Janeiro, with about 30,000 members, network structure, and rivalry with the PCC.
Common scold
Common scold (communis rixatrix): an English common law nuisance offence against habitual scolding women, punished by the cucking or ducking stool; abolished in England and Wales in 1967 but prosecuted in the US until 1972.
Consent
Consent (sexual consent, samtycke) is voluntary agreement to sexual activity requiring freedom and capacity. Key facts: UK s.74 definition, Canada s.273.1, Sweden's 2018 consent-based rape law, affirmative versus no-means-no models.
Consigliere
Consigliere (Italian "counselor") is the senior advisor rank in the Italian-American and Sicilian Mafia, part of a family's administration with the boss and underboss, typically the number-three man, mediator, and keeper of rules and traditions.
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is the legal doctrine punishing conduct that interferes with justice or defies court orders, in criminal and civil forms; England and Wales caps criminal contempt at two years' imprisonment and a £2,500 fine.
Contract killing
Contract killing, also called murder for hire or Auftragsmord, is a murder committed under a paid contract; descriptive term, not a distinct offence, with documented prices, hit rates, and organized-crime roles.
Counterfeit money
Counterfeit money is illegally produced currency imitating genuine notes or coins. Covers history, UK/US/euro/Russia incidence figures, detection methods, and laws like the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981.
Credit card fraud
Credit card fraud is the unauthorized use of a card or its account data, spanning counterfeit cards, lost or stolen cards, and remote card-not-present misuse. Global losses reached $33.83 billion in 2023, with EMV chips curbing counterfeit fraud and shifting losses to remote channels.
Crips
The Crips are a loose association of mostly African American street gangs founded in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, best known for their rivalry with the Bloods.
Cruelty to animals
Cruelty to animals, also called animal abuse, is the infliction of unnecessary suffering on animals through abuse or neglect. Distinguished by its property-based legal origins, the 1866 ASPCA founding, the US Animal Welfare Act, and modern veterinary forensics.
Culpable homicide
Culpable homicide, also called culpable homicide not amounting to murder, is blameworthy killing short of murder in Scots, South African, Indian, New Zealand, and Zimbabwean law; in Canada it is the umbrella for murder, manslaughter, and infanticide.
Curb stomp
Curb stomp (also "bite the curb"): a violent assault forcing a victim's mouth onto a curb edge and stomping the head. Popularized by the 1998 film American History X; biomechanical studies report stomping forces of thousands of newtons causing skull fractures.
CVLT (organization)
CVLT (pronounced "cult") was a Discord-based neo-Nazi, nihilistic child exploitation group and precursor to 764 within The Com; leaders including Rohan Rane and Kaleb Merritt were prosecuted in France and the United States.
Cybercrime
Cybercrime: criminal activity committed against or by means of computers and ICT; no international definition exists. Divided into cyber-dependent and cyber-enabled offences plus online child sexual exploitation; governed internationally by the 2001 Budapest Convention.
Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012
Republic Act 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, is the Philippine law signed September 12, 2012 defining cybercrime offenses including cyber libel, data preservation duties, and the DOJ Office of Cybercrime; partly voided in Disini v. Secretary of Justice (2014).
D-Company
D-Company (D Company, D-Gang) is the transnational crime syndicate founded by Dawood Ibrahim in 1970s Mumbai, now based in Pakistan, known for narcotics, extortion, the 1993 Bombay bombings, ISI ties, and U.S. Kingpin Act sanctions.
Dacoity
Dacoity, also called gang robbery (ḍakaitī), is the Indian offence of robbery committed or attempted by five or more persons conjointly, punishable with life imprisonment or up to ten years, now under BNS Section 310.
Dan Saunders ATM glitch
Dan Saunders, a bartender from Wangaratta, exploited a 2011 flaw in the National Australia Bank ATM system, withdrawing $1.6 million over four and a half months.
Dana Ewell
Dana James Ewell, Fresno heir convicted of hiring college friend Joel Radovcich to murder his parents Dale and Glee and sister Tiffany in 1992 for an $8 million estate; both sentenced to life without parole in 1998.
Daniel Wozniak (murderer)
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, Costa Mesa community theater actor, murdered Army veteran Samuel Herr and student Julie Kibuishi in May 2010 to steal $62,000; convicted 2015, sentenced to death 2016.
Danielle K. Citron
Danielle Keats Citron is an American law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law whose scholarship on cyberstalking, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and deepfakes reshaped United States law on online harassment.
Danny Porush
Danny Porush, American former stockbroker, co-founder and president of Stratton Oakmont with Jordan Belfort; pump-and-dump frauds, guilty pleas, four-year prison term, and the real Donnie Azoff in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Darknet market
Darknet markets (cryptomarkets, DNMs) are Tor-accessible e-commerce sites trading illicit goods, mainly drugs (about two thirds of activity), using cryptocurrency escrow; Silk Road (2011) was the first, followed by dozens of successors despite takedowns and exit scams.
Date rape
Date rape: non-consensual intercourse by an acquaintance or date during a social engagement; also called acquaintance rape. Key facts: alcohol is the most common substance involved, Rohypnol and GHB are classic date rape drugs, and it is not a legally distinct rape category.
Date rape drug
Date rape drugs: any drug or alcohol, most often alcohol, used to make rape or sexual assault easier; includes Rohypnol, GHB, GBL, ketamine. Also called DFSA or chemical submission; rapid elimination hampers detection.
David Parker Ray
David Parker Ray (November 6, 1939 – May 28, 2002), the "Toy-Box Killer", was a New Mexico kidnapper and torturer arrested in 1999 near Elephant Butte, sentenced to over 223 years, never convicted of murder, and died in prison in 2002.
Dead Rabbits
Dead Rabbits: name given to an Irish Five Points street-fighting group of 1850s New York, rivals of the Bowery Boys, famous for the July 1857 riot; historians dispute whether the gang existed under that name.
Death of Azaria Chamberlain
Death of Azaria Chamberlain: nine-week-old Australian baby taken by a dingo from her family's tent at Uluru on 17 August 1980; her mother Lindy Chamberlain was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1982 and exonerated in 1988, with a dingo finding only in 2012.
Death of Brian Wells
Death of Brian Wells: 2003 collar-bomb killing of Erie, Pennsylvania pizza deliveryman Brian Douglas Wells, who robbed a PNC Bank with a bomb locked to his neck; the device detonated in police custody, later tied to the Diehl-Armstrong conspiracy.
Death of Caylee Anthony
Death of Caylee Anthony, the 2008 unsolved death of an Orlando two-year-old found decomposed near her home; mother Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder in 2011; ruled homicide by undetermined means.