An increasing number of cybercrimes has presented new global challenges to law enforcement agencies that traditionally operate within designated geographical jurisdictions and patrol territories. The borderless nature of cyberspace has brought substantial opportunities—both legal and illegal—to its users, and many local law enforcement agencies have encountered motivated offenders taking advantage of the globally connected Internet and causing damage locally and transnationally. This study examines a high-profile case of European criminals who hacked into a Taiwanese financial institution—First Commercial Bank (FCB)—and programmed its ATMs to “spit out” cash netting the thieves $2.6 million US dollars in 2016 summer. Before the incident of FCB, this European criminal group committed more than a hundred similar ATMs hackings, victimizing dozens of financial institutions across several European countries, and profiting over one billion Euros. FCB is the only case revealing specific details about the modus operandi of ATM hacking thus far, in addition to disclosing reactions from law enforcement. By analyzing qualitative data collected from different branches of law enforcement involved in the investigations, this unique case study underscores the importance of national-local law enforcement collaboration in fighting transnational cybercrime. Empirical implications are particularly valuable in the law enforcement context of “turf jealousies” when defending homeland security.

Criminological and sociological discourse recognizes the impact of structure on crime, but generally eschews the consideration of structural damage and human suffering emanating from malevolent social movements (e.g., the Holocaust). Legal formalism presents conceptual challenges that has hindered analysis of harmful macroscopic phenomena, as it created jurisprudential impediments to be surmounted by the architects of the Nuremberg Tribunals. In considering these issues, a new ‘dark figure’ is identified that is compatible with phenomena examined from the social harm perspective, and to remediate disciplinary myopia, a specification of Edwin Sutherland’s (1945) concept of social injury is suggested and contrasted with Galtung’s (1969) construct of structural violence. Social injury refers to the recursive damage to social structure and human potential through the functional impairment of social institutions.