It is no secret that the increasingly borderless nature of transnational organized crime has sent law enforcement bodies worldwide scrambling to keep pace with criminal syndicates. Attackers, money routes, communications channels, and beneficiaries are often spread across multiple jurisdictions, reinforcing the operational reality that cybercrime investigations span several countries simultaneously. In Jamaica, a major shift is taking place as the island is now both a target and a platform from which fraudsters use progressively more sophisticated technologies and methods to target victims.
Jervis Moore, director of Investigations at Jamaica’s Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA), the country’s lead agency for combating organized crime, cybercrime, and corruption, says that the trend can only be expected to continue.
“Cyber criminals love borders because investigators do not,” Moore said. “An email that originates in Jamaica, crosses an email server in Europe before ending up in an inbox in Arizona. It then moves stolen funds through U.S. bank accounts and intermediary entities, before hitting a beneficiary somewhere in Africa. That is how complex these crimes have become, and how much more difficult it is now for law enforcement to unravel.”
As cyber-enabled criminal networks increasingly target financial systems, public institutions, and critical infrastructure, cooperation has become not only an operational necessity for law enforcement, but also a broader national security requirement.
In response to this reality, law enforcement bodies like MOCA have had to become more integrated, coordinated, and adaptable.
“In these cases, evidence doesn’t sit neatly in one place,” says Moore, “and the only way to build a complete case is through coordination with trusted partners across various fields, specializations, and jurisdictions.”
For MOCA, the emphasis on partnerships and interagency coordination is seen as a strategic and operational advantage, one which the agency has been able to leverage to great effect. In 2023, the agency was alerted by Jamaica’s National Water Commission (NWC) that cyber criminals had illegally re-routed over $1 million to beneficiaries’ bank accounts. Working alongside U.S. Federal and Nigerian Law Enforcement partners, MOCA traced the scheme to threat actors in Nigeria, leading to two suspects being arrested and most of the money being returned to Jamaica after being frozen in intermediary U.S. bank accounts.
According to Moore, that case demonstrates what coordination looks like in practice. It starts with local detection and reporting, moves into deep forensic work, before expanding into coordination with authorities in the jurisdictions where suspects operate or where the money trail leads.
Nigel Parke, MOCA’s senior director of Legal and Prosecutorial Services, has been with the agency since its inception and has seen quite a bit of the evolving nature of transnational organized crime.
“No Jamaican entity can simply operate in Lagos or seize infrastructure or assets on its own. Cross-border cyber enforcement depends on trusted partner relationships, shared intelligence, and very importantly, legal agreements. These cases are increasingly document heavy and jurisdictionally complex. The challenge is to not only identify and arrest offenders, but also to build solid, prosecutable cases that can survive scrutiny in courts across different legal systems. The NWC case is one of the clearest examples of that system working,” he says.
Domestically, MOCA has also relied heavily on partnerships and coordination to strengthen its capabilities. Like most law enforcement entities, the agency faces a critical shortage of experts and expertise to keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat environment. Competition is fierce for funding, technical capabilities, and skilled personnel, and no single entity can be expected to maintain every capability required to confront rapidly evolving threats. This makes the case for partnership and coordination that much stronger.
To underscore its strategic importance, the agency maintains several memorandums of understandings (MOUs) with other local law enforcement bodies such as the Financial Investigations Division (FID) and Jamaica’s Integrity Commission, as well as partnership mechanisms with international counterparts. These bridge organizational gaps and provide a clear, written framework to guide how these partnerships are executed and operationalized.
The quiet truth is that Jamaica’s greatest force multiplier against transnational organized crime is not just technology, legislation, or operations, but the network of local, regional, and international partnerships that underpin this important fight.
