>EBISAWA, JULLANAN, and RUKRASARANEE conspired to broker the purchase from UC-1 of United States-made surface-to-air missiles (“SAMs”), as well as other heavy-duty weaponry, for multiple ethnic armed groups in Burma, and to accept large quantities of heroin and methamphetamine for distribution as partial payment for the weapons. EBISAWA, JULLANAN, and RUKRASARANEE understood the weapons to have been manufactured in the United States and taken from United States military bases in Afghanistan and planned for the narcotics to be distributed in the New York market.
I thought so to but as soon as Afghanistan was mentioned, it changed my mind into "mundane criminality".
Heroin is a normal crop in Afghanistan. Lots of US military equipment was abandoned during the US retreat, and a lot of Afghanistan army equipment (from the US) was seized at the time by the taliban.
Trading of such things to interested foreign buyers (such as Burma factions hoping to defend against government air forces) feels more like tragic normal world events than Bond movie villainry.
> In addition, EBISAWA and SINGHASIRI conspired to sell 500 kilograms of methamphetamine and 500 kilograms of heroin to UC-1 for distribution in New York
Obviously this is a "bad person" and I do think they should be arrested, put in Jail, but... isn't this entrapment? I mean this guy UC-1 obviously brought up "hey you guys wanna buy some SAMs", and then they were arrested. I am curious if this is because the weapons charge would be a longer prison sentence than drug trafficking or they couldn't bust him on that without creating this situation.
Again, obviously this person should be behind bars, but this method of manufacturing scenarios seems somewhat insane to me. Maybe I am misinterpreting the release but thats the way it seems.
In the US, the legal standard to use entrapment as a defense requires you to show 1) inducement (as opposed to mere solicitation) to commit the crime AND 2) that you were not predisposed to commit the crime. https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
So entrapment basically means you were coaxed into a committing a crime that you weren't predisposed to commit. So if an undercover FBI agent becomes your best friend and begs you, who are not in the business of selling drugs or any contraband, to help them score some cocaine, that's entrapment. But if they just become a business associate of yours and ask you to help them source some stolen goods and you say yes, that's not entrapment because it's probably just solicitation, not inducement. Or say you're out there slinging cocaine on a corner and an undercover cop walks up to you, but you smell something fishy and turn him down, but then he begs you to help him because he really needs his fix and is going nuts, and you give in and sell to him. That sounds like inducement but you were already predisposed to commit that crime, so no entrapment defense for you probably.
The second example, Grayson, makes no sense to me. This is someone who would not have committed a crime, perhaps never has, and never would have if not being asked to do it. The police literally invented a situation to encourage him to commit a crime. Saying that he was "inclined" is weaselly. I doubt this would fly in the UK although curious to be shown otherwise.
I do remember a case in the UK where a man successfully defended his sale of ecstasy to an undercover officer on the grounds that she was very attractive. His argument was that he hoped to have a romantic relationship with her and would never have otherwise sold the drugs.
I mean, even then it's contextual surely. How far can the police go? Can they look around for someone who's having an incredibly tough year financially, and offer them a one-off way to scrape through by selling drugs, even if the opportunity would never arise otherwise? We're in the realm of hyperrealism and state-constructed narratives here.
Yes I imagine it's a consequence of target-based management practices infiltrating the public sphere. The "bad press" blocker works if the media is free and independent. Unfortunately in many countries it is often in the hands of corporate moguls and is co-opted into the exact same narrative building. The CIA famously tried to use the media for their own devious ends. In the UK we had the Hillsborough disaster among many other examples of press cover-ups.
That term needs to die, my guess is plenty of people get nailed for committing minor crimes they might not have otherwise because someone (a cop) convinced them it’s not a big deal. (No clue how many cases like Jesse Snodgrass[0] there are but it’s wild that scenarios like this can even happen, there is always a real crime to be solved yet resources were wasted on this)
Along the same lines: “It’s never a hitman” (and now I suppose we can also add “You’re never buying a surface to air missile”)
The Japanese system is big on coercing confessions (the American system is big on plea deals so you might think its the same, but its not quite the same thing). They have all kinds of buttons they can press to force the issue on you.
Another thing is even you are somehow found innocent, the prosecutor gets to immediately appeal and they are likely to win that appeal. You stay in jail/prison while all this plays out.
The US system is SUPPOSED to be based on its better to let the guilty go free than punish the innocent. (It fails at this but this is at least a lip service value) The Japanese system doesnt do this or really hold this as a major value.
You're cherry picking. I can google "wrong person arrested" or similar and find 1000s of stories in the USA. The fact is Japan's conviction rate is lower than USA if you measure the same way. It's only because of the way it's measured that it appears to be higher.
I don't know much about modern day Yakuza but it seems pretty impressive, morals aside, to have grown from essentially gambling fronts in Japan to managing multinational arms deals of military grade equipment on behalf of country governments. I imagine these people would be quite successful if they aimed at more legal areas of business. There's still a lot of opportunity for morally shitty but legal areas in corporate America.
> I imagine these people would be quite successful if they aimed at more legal areas of business.
My understanding is that Yakuza are generally "Burakumin", which is basically a sub-ethnicity that has been discriminated against in Japan for hundreds of years. They have a strong cultural heritage of decorative tattoos, which is why people with tattoos aren't allowed in gyms or nice restaurants in Japan. It's illegal to discriminate against them in the workplace, but basically every company still does extensive family background checks looking for any sign of Burakumin heritage, and if discovered, they'll suddenly realize that you just aren't a good fit for the company.
This is why they're "born to lose". They can't get legitimate high paying jobs, so they build their own ecosystem that they can thrive in. Lots of criminal participation around the world comes directly as a result of systemic discrimination. These are often smart people making the best of a shitty situation that they were born into.
While burakumin are well-represented in yakuza circles, not all yakuza are burakumin (which often was/is an inherited "India-style" caste, less so an ethnicity), especially so if you look outside the Yamaguchi-gumi. Unlike "burakumin" status, you can "get rid" of your status as yakuza, and return to a more or less standard "civilian" life.
I've heard about this many times before but how prevalent is this actually today? It's hard to be racist if it requires detailed ancestry analysis. I've never heard it mentioned in Japanese media.
The only ways I could imagine it occurring is maybe trying to join big old Japanese companies (but a background check of that nature seems like it would still be - legally? - difficult) or perhaps marriage into a super traditional home which there can't be many of now.
Unlike the rhetoric of "Just Say No", this is what black markets are. They are not run by idiots, but generally desperate people with no other means. Once you are over the line in that world, the good doesnt matter. You are working underground, anything goes. Desperate people get taken advantage of, but the yakuza are just one link. This route is usually controlled by the triads, they have been arming conflict in the golden triangle for years. Like any other capitalists, blackmarket syndicates expand and fight for terroritory.
>They are not run by idiots, but generally desperate people with no other means
Eh I wouldn't say that's entirely accurate. Much like any other domain there's opportunity and cost. When an illegal enterprise is profitable, there's very little incentive to actually stop. These people aren't necessarily desperate, their business models are more directly... amoral. It's true that the underclass dominate petty crime, but that's not really an accurate description of the underground criminal enterprise. They're just the most visible victims, and in an industry that essentially tries to keep itself faceless and out of the limelight, it might appear to the untrained eye that there's only a little more beyond that.
The addict engaged in robbing your car is but one end link of a long chain of traffickers: transporters, producers, middlemen, and corrupt officials that lined their pockets with a little bit of the proceeds. Few or none of which even consume any of their product.
But in general, this is not true or at least not true everywhere. Our local mafias and "black market" were not desperate people. They were people seeing opportunities and taking advantage of them to the max. Some of them generated desperate people among their victims, sure. But, those rarely turned into bosses or gang members.
Most of what they did were choices and not a result of "not having any other choice".
>I imagine these people would be quite successful if they aimed at more legal areas of business.
As I understand it, the Yakuza basically have their hands in everything related to entertainment (especially gambling and porn) in Japan, including the video game studios. There's a story about a certain four-letter video game studio that had a developer's sister kidnapped to keep them from working for Nintendo[0], a company that had its own Yakuza connections when it sold hanafuda cards and ran love hotels[1].
But... what's the point of being an organized crime syndicate that only obeys the law?
They touch a lot of land related business (construction, real estate market, worker groups), and will also front "grey" areas like non-bank loans, risky work contracting (sending workers to Fukushima...), credit card contracting, and as sister comment points out, entertainment and sexy work.
In short, they've well expanded into any area where shitty morals is a strong business advantage.
The Yakuza working with Thai nationals in Manhattan, of all places, to buy drugs, and weapons to be sent to unstable regions. It's like something out of a bad Hollywood movie, so outrageously clumsy and improbable that it makes no sense at all.
I'm willing to believe the charges are made up and that these people need to "go away" for other reasons.
> It's like something out of a bad Hollywood movie, so outrageously clumsy and improbable that it makes no sense at all.
That sort of shit happened after the Balkan wars, too. A lot of weaponry from that era, anything from WW1-era guns to modern grenades, found its way into virtually every major conflict zone in the world, and to this day, if you speak good enough Croatian and somewhat know whom to ask and how, you can buy all kinds of arms - just recently, a group connected to various factions of the German far-right got hauled in front of the courts for a weapons smuggling ring [1].
