The pirates' high level of coordination and business model bear the hallmarks of organized crime, experts from across the industry and government agencies agree. One big tell: A growing number of attacks in the area involve commandeering vessels and stealing whole cargoes, especially liquid fuel, as opposed to simple theft of whatever pirates can find laying around. That means finding a buyer for a particular product in advance, often an international buyer with plenty of capital. Next, pirate groups have to gather intelligence that will let them target a ship containing that specific cargo. Then they have to make big capital expenditures, such acquiring their own tanker that will carry the stolen cargo. Then they need to fence the fuel.  "It's definitely organized crime," said Michael McNicholas, managing director of Phoenix Group, a maritime security firm. "And they have to have international links. They're taking it ashore. They need a refinery that will turn their head. And those refineries are cutting them deals."  Given current market prices for, say, naval fuel, and the quantities that pirates have been able to siphon away in attacks that have been documented, a gang can steal fuel worth upwards of $2 million in one robbery. Certainly, pirates are unlikely to get fair market value, since part of the way they draw buyers is by offering heavily discounted prices. Their huge operating margins make slashing prices easy. But even accounting for discounted pricing, they're engaged in transactions that require them to line up a major buyer ahead of time, said Derek Baldwin, director of Worldwide Operations at IBIS Risk Management Services, which investigates fraud and other crimes for the U.S. government and corporate clients.  "If I know you buy oil, and I have dealt with you before, I call you up and say, 'Can you use 10,000 gallons?' I'm getting it for free, so I can quote you a really good price," Baldwin said.  Small tankers are perfect targets in more ways than one. When they're loaded, their decks are close to the water line and they move slowly, making them easy to board.  Just before midnight on June 17, the Budi Mesra Dua was overcome by a high-speed wooden boat as it steamed slowly with a cargo of diesel oil, according to an account from ReCAAP. Six pirates armed with swords tied down the crew of the Budi Mesra Dua and forced its master and chief officer to sail to a new location close to land. There, a barge with 20 more pirates arrived. They boarded and siphoned off 940 metric tons of diesel onto the barge. They fled at 9 a.m. the next day, leaving the crew unharmed, after smashing the diesel tanker's communication and navigation equipment.  Current liquid fuel prices make their cargoes appealing to organized crime. Marine gas oil can go for $900 a metric ton on the open market. Plus, liquid fuels are hard to track, and pirates sometimes make them even more difficult to trace by moving them through multiple middlemen or by mixing refined products with other grades of fuel. In fact, those mixtures are turning up on the market more and more, said Pottengal Mukundan of the IMB.  That can pose its own danger to vessels far away from the scene of pirate attacks. A growing problem of "contaminated" oils turning up in Southeast Asia means many buyers are unknowingly adding fuel that can damage engines because it doesn't meet the ship's specifications.
Piracy is exploding in the world’s most heavily trafficked commercial waterway, and organized crime is the force behind it.