Financial Crime Online

The Hindustan Times reported ‘One of the largest Hawala networks in the world unearthed’. We have never seen the Guiness Book of Records entry for Hawaladars but as always the summary of the Hawala network emphasizes how vast they can be and how much funds can be funneled across the world without detection. This week [...]

The G-20 leaders have asked for a public list of high-risk money laundering and terror financing jurisdictions by February, stating they are ready with counter measures against tax havens from March next year. “We welcome the progress made by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in the fight against money laundering and terrorists financing and [...]

CNN ran an interesting story on the rise of drug trafficking in Africa and reported that Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market. While the European market [...]

Some intriguing details were published of a suspected money laundering scheme that may have benefited a Taiwan ex-president and his family — under an arrangement that could have links to terrorist cells, and that allegedly involved a bank in Palau. The Chens, former first family of Taiwan, are suspected of funneling as much as $45 [...]

Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) and Russia’s Federal Customs Service had reached an out-of-court settlement to end a 22,5bn money-laundering lawsuit filed by the Russian agency, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Thursday. “The two sides recognised the necessity of reaching a settlement as well as payment of costs no less than what was [...]

This week a criminal complaint related to a Ponzi scheme that has been running for 30 years was unsealed. As alleged in the complaint, suspect Philip Barry began accepting money in the late 1970s from individuals seeking a return on investment. Operating multiple entities that over time collectively became known as “the Leverage Group,” Barry [...]

The police in the Netherlands seized 4.6 million euro ($ 6.5 million) stuffed in a bag. While searching the suspects’ houses the police retrieved another 100k and a firearm. According to the police the cash belonged to a criminal organization that grows marijuana on a large scale in the Netherlands. Most of the suspects involved [...]

The US Department of Justice announced that  US pharmaceutical Pfizer agreed to pay $2.3 billion to settle a health care fraud. Pfizer’s subsidiary Pharmacia & Upjohn agreed to plead guilty to having misbranded Brextra with the intent to defraud and mislead. Brexta is an antiflammatory drug that was discontinued in 2005. Although the FDA had [...]

Our personal (financial) information is an important piece of the scheme for fraudsters. Although we think about hackers and online exposure, a recent study from the ID Theft Resource center shows that a lot of personal information still gets stolen the old fashioned way: lo-tech data breaches a la snatching wallets and mail. 9% of [...]