Covid-19 has turned our idea of “normal” upside-down. Governments, social orders, and the world economy have all been challenged and reshaped in previously unimaginable ways.

The flow of illegal goods and services is no exception. Organized criminal groups adapted and even profited from the weaknesses that the pandemic created or exposed. Cyber-crime boomed, new prohibition markets emerged, a lack of safeguarding left children open to exploitation, and corruption proliferated in health-care systems. In their new book, ‘Criminal Contagion: How Mafias, Gangsters and Scammers profit from a Pandemic’, Tuesday Reitano and Mark Shaw outline how different criminal markets responded to Covid-19, and the long-term impact the pandemic could have on the global illicit economy.