France & Spain go after Syrian PEP, the Butcher of Hama’s $1 billion in unexplained wealth

Tweet Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, is facing permanent asset forfeiture in France in connection with unexplained wealth and asset accumulation in France. He was charged in France last month with corruption, money laundering and embezzlement of state assets from Syria. He was ordered to remain in France. He is a politically […]

US DoJ unseals indictment against two people associated with payment processor of digital currency exchanges

Tweet The DOJ from the Southern District of New York, unsealed a grand jury superseding indictment against two people today for allegedly providing payment processing services to digital currency exchanges without being licensed and under circumstances where they allegedly lied to obtain bank accounts. They are charged with bank fraud. According to the indictment, Reginald […]

Australian police uncover Bitcoin-related alleged international drug traffickers

Tweet Two Bitcoin-related alleged drug traffickers living large  In the last few months, the Australian Federal Police have arrested two well-known Bitcoin guys suspected of leading secret lives as international drug traffickers. Both alleged to the public that they had real jobs, one operating a digital currency exchange and the other an IT business, but […]

How artificial intelligence is changing investigations, policing and law enforcement

Tweet Artificial intelligence is having a significant positive impact on the ability of law enforcement to identify criminals and to detect and investigate crime.  In the process, it is changing the face of policing. Early AI in Money Laundering AI in law enforcement is not new. Two areas where AI was used early on in law enforcement […]

Woman who bought Bitcoin with $300,000 in cash in grocery bags, going to jail for one year

Tweet A woman in California, who admitted operating an unlicensed in-person digital currency exchange where she traded cash for Bitcoin,  was sentenced today to 12 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of US$20,000. Theresa Tetley pled guilty to conducting an illegal business and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions involving Bitcoin, and […]

How the US Alien Tort Statute might expose Canadian financial institutions

Tweet The US Supreme Court this term is ruling on a case that may impact Canadian banks and other financial institutions. The case, Jesner v. Arab Bank, involves over 6,000 petitioners from Israel who were victims of terrorism in the Middle East who filed a tort claim against a corporation in New York, the Arab […]

World Check being sued over database of personal information

Tweet A number of persons and organizations are allegedly preparing to sue Thomson Reuters, the organization that runs World Check for wrongly listing them in a database as a financial crime risk. World Check created (apparently without informed consent at least under Canadian law), an online global database that purports to provide anti-money laundering, sanctions […]

2016 in Review

Tweet Every year, we like to give a summary of the most popular stories on our website measured by analytics of visits because it gives a sense of what issues are of interest to the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing community globally and future trends. Here are some of our statistics for 2016: Most popular […]