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Asian Criminal Enterprises

Asian Criminal Enterprises impacting the United States are groups organized by criminals predominantly from East and Southeast Asia, including groups whose members are of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Filipino, Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese descent. However, other Asian Criminal Enterprises are emerging as domestic and international threats, including groups from the South Pacific Island nations as well as groups from Southwest Asia such as Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Iran. In the United States, Asian Criminal Enterprises have been identified in more than 50 metropolitan areas, but are most prevalent in Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

These Asian Criminal Enterprises utilize extensive networks of national and international criminal associates that are very fluid and extremely mobile. They adapt easily to the changes around them, have multilingual abilities, can be highly sophisticated in their criminal operations, and have extensive financial capabilities. Some Asian Criminal Enterprises have commercialized their criminal activities and can be viewed as business firms of various sizes, from small family-run operations to large corporations, depending upon each group's maturity in the criminal business in which they specialize.

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