‘Recruited off the street’: The teenagers being groomed in Melbourne’s plague of arson attacks
A ‘crime-as-a-service’ system and encrypted apps are used to recruit young ‘cleanskins’; police say some recruited children had no prior contact with the justice system.
Organised crime figures are recruiting teenagers off Melbourne streets and through encrypted apps to carry out arson attacks, with police and underworld sources describing a ‘crime-as-a-service’ system that can protect higher-level actors while exploiting those at the bottom.