I don't have a printed source off-hand, but a law enforcement friend once described to me how wealthy criminal (narcotics) gangs work. Your average "dumb street thug" is a low-level throwaway in the eyes of the gang. They work through a series of intermediaries, to avoid the low-level guys knowing too much, very much like spies.

The guys at the top are much smarter, and are running in some cases multi-billion dollar operations. You have to be smart to be in charge of something at that scale, whether it's Wal-Mart or MS-13. I'm not saying the gang bosses are good, but many of them are smart. They have "technology teams" of sorts. After all, somebody thought to strap drugs to drones and experimented with payloads before sending them...