The profile of the international cyber offender in the U.S.

Prosecuting and punishing cybercrime is challenging, and made even more difficult when committed across international boundaries. Not only are standard issues of anonymity made more challenging, but poor diplomacy and communication between countries can make resolution nearly impossible. An empirical method of using previous crimes as a way to explore the current state of international cybercrime enforcement, exclusively using cases of non-US citizens committing crimes in the US between 2009-2017. Some key insights include the fact that countries who don't initially buy in to a framework for prosecuting cybercrime are at a higher risk for cybercriminals within their borders in the future. Russia, China, Brazil and India currently have the highest numbers of cybercriminals. An important finding using empirical data is that credit card fraud and identity theft, which are the most common of cybercrimes, receive the harshest prison sentences. It was interesting to note that Romania was second only to China in the number of crimes committed in the study. It was also interesting to see the data broken down by which nationalities receive the longest sentences, as in this case it was residents of African countries.