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...

If criminals can pull off USD50 Billion Ponzi Schemes on the financial markets, (Madoff), and hack into Experian to attain credit card data on the majority of Americans. I'm sure MORE than a few of them can work out how to build a drone, or forty.

The Mexican cartels were recently known to be kidnapping network engineers and field technicians to compel them into building private communications infrastructure.

You don't have to know how to build it yourself, you just need to stick a gun in the ribcage of someone who does.