Organised crime is said to be costing Australia $15 billion a year and the international community almost $1 trillion a year.
The Australian Crime Commission's latest snapshot of organised crime says organised crime is now an unprecedented part of everyday life, fuelled in part by criminals embracing the digital age.
The Commission's report says laws are not keeping up with organised crime's global spread and sophisticated criminals know it.
Amanda Cavill has the details.
The Crime Commission's report looks at emerging global trends in crime, as well as cybercrime, people trafficking, drugs, economic crime and corruption.
It says globalisation has been embraced and exploited by organised crime.
It says the internet has cut out the traditional middle man, helping to contribute to the increase in illegal transactions, like drug deals, now taking place in cyberspace.
Home Affairs Minister Jason Claire says organised crime is more pervasive, powerful and complex than ever and is costing the world a small fortune.
"Organised crime worldwide now makes more than $870 billion dollars a year. Now to get a grip on the size of that figure that's more than the GDP of Indonesia. Another way of putting it, if organised crime was a country it would be in the G20. And these big organised crime syndicates that target Australia are also targeting other countries."
Mr Clare says most of the big time organised criminals that target Australia are based overseas.
He says Australia's wealth makes it a prime target for organised crime groups.
"Have a look at these figures. The typical wholesale price for a kilo of cocaine in Colombia is about $US2500. That's the wholesale price for Cocaine in Colombia. In Mexico it's $US12,500. In the United States the average price is more than $US30,000. In Australia it's $220,000 Australian dollars. So that's a mark up of over 9000 per cent.
Head of the Australian Crime Commission John Lawler says technology has increased the reach of organised crime.
He says the internet enables the establishment of virtual marketplaces for illegal and illicit goods such as drugs, firearms, identification documents and child exploitation material.
But John Lawler says organised crime is not only targeting illegal markets.
He says crime groups operating outside of Australia are cleverly targeting people's retirement savings through the use of fraudulent tricks.
He says investors are increasingly being targeted by by apparently legitimate financial institutions but are in fact being operated by crime syndicates.
Mr Lawler says people's lives are being ruined.
"We see once-financially independent families and individuals becoming dependent on social welfare after they've lost their life savings to fraudsters. These are very real impacts for everyday Australians and those impacts are being driven by organised criminality."
Mr Lawler says with superannuation assets in Australia currently estimated at $1.3 trillion, highly sophisticated offshore organised fraud networks will continue to establish complex fraudulent schemes to steal superannuation savings.
He says these financial crimes are emerging as an important threat, and have the potential to do significant harm to the Australian economy and the Australian community.
"We've lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars to foreign jurisdictions. That's billions of dollars that should have remained in the Australian economy supporting businesses, supporting employment and supporting growth for our country and organised crime has had that impact."
John Lawler says the impact of organised crime extends beyond domestic law enforcement and border protection capability and dealing with it requires international co-operation.
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