Analytical Models
Named conceptual frameworks that transform raw findings into understanding. Each model is a pattern detector — once named, it can be applied systematically across the investigation. Multiple models can apply to the same evidence simultaneously.
The Bridge Tax
Power from occupying structural holes
Power derived from occupying structural holes in a network — bridging otherwise disconnected groups and capturing the information asymmetry between them. The "tax" is what the broker extracts for providing the bridge: fees, information, obligation, or leverage.
Complexity as Credential
The con and the infrastructure are the same thing
The deliberate use of complex financial structures to simultaneously (a) obscure activity from oversight, (b) signal sophistication and wealth to marks, and (c) generate the conditions for manufactured dependency. The complexity serves the con and IS the con.
The Enabler Gradient
From architects to unwitting participants
Within any complex financial crime network, participants operate at different levels of awareness and complicity — from fully complicit architects to unwitting service providers — and the system requires participants at every level.
Jurisdictional Arbitrage
Exploiting gaps between legal regimes
The exploitation of differences between legal, regulatory, and enforcement regimes across jurisdictions — extracting value where oversight is weak and storing/protecting it where institutions are strong.
Manufactured Dependency
Creating problems to sell solutions
A pattern where an operator creates the conditions for problems to arise, then positions themselves as the solution — generating leverage without explicit coercion.
The Narrative Shield
Controlling the information environment
Power maintained through controlling the information environment — shaping what is reported, what questions are asked, and what narratives dominate — not through direct coercion but through cultivated media relationships, strategic information placement, and reputation infrastructure.
The Parallel Financial System
Where intelligence finance meets private crime
Off-the-books financial infrastructure — maintained by or for intelligence services — that intersects with and enables private financial crime, because the same mechanisms (shell companies, compliant banks, deniable intermediaries) serve both purposes.
The Private Order
Access-controlled networks within open societies
A parallel access-controlled network operating within an ostensibly open-access democratic society, where membership is maintained through reciprocal obligation and access to the network IS the rent.
These eight models form an interlocking system. Hover over a node to see its relationships. Click to navigate to the full model page.