The Indicator from Planet Money - Vice Series: The evolving business of crime

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

Crime doesn’t resemble the old days. A deepfake of your voice can be used to convince a relative you need money. AI bots are capable of colluding in financial markets. There are seemingly countless new strategies of making data breaches more common. This week on The Indicator from Planet Money, we bring you five episodes digging into the evolving business of crime. For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.  See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Rain pounds against the window of Detective Billy Hull, Small Town Office. He robs his temples and slugs down his whiskey. Cricket cops, bent jobs. There's rough out there. They say every crime's got a story, and every story's got a sucker. Detective Hull, I need your help. I got in too deep with the numbers racket, and now I marked. The mob's on my tail.

So the mob's running numbers again, huh? Well, hot tamale! Could you give me a hand here? I've been out of that tune for a while. Crime doesn't resemble the old days anymore. Today's crime smells like synthetic drugs, data breaches, deep face. All right, kid, I can help you. But first, I'm going to need to listen to like five podcast episodes. This coming week, the indicator from Planet Money brings you a week of episodes on the evolving business of crime.