Financial Crime Online

This week the FBI announced the indictment of 10 individuals charged with conspiring to export weapons from Philadelphia to the Port of Latakia, Syria. The suspects allegedly wanted to help Hizballah by providing them with 1,200 Colt M4 Carbines. Other suspects were also charged with conspiring to provide material support to Hizballah in the form [...]

Most countries ban some types of gambling. The type of gambling ‘games’ that are allowed are usually strictly regulated and mostly (semi) government owned. That does not mean that the odds are fair. In sports betting, game rigging is a real concern. And obviously, when you speak about big bucks, there will be big criminals [...]

A Pa. lawyer, Mr. Karoly, was convicted of fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutors claimed that the lawyer and his brothers faked a will to collect “a significant portion” of his brother’s and sister-in-law’s multi-million dollar estates after they were killed in a Feb. 2, 2007 plane crash.
Other than that, the U.S. District Judge said that 59-year-old [...]

A Chicago police sergeant who heads a local sergeants association has been arrested on charges he stole more than $600,000 from the organization.
Prosecutors allege he made withdrawals and wrote checks payable to himself on the association’s bank account. He allegedly laundered the proceeds to his personal credit card and bank accounts.
Authorities claim the CPD sergeant [...]

Finally; a new acronym. FFETF. Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. Why the wait?
Anyway: a new task force, headed by DOJ, with a serious mission:
“This task force’s mission is not just to hold accountable those who helped bring about the last financial meltdown, but to prevent another meltdown from happening.”
The taskforce  is composed of senior-level officials [...]

Or to rephrase this headline : “US Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) staff accepting bribes from Korean businessman”. And as always: taking bribes does not lead to the optimal choice. The increased vigilance related to procurement in the armed forces is (unfortunately) absolutely necessary to make sure the armed forces get what they [...]

Former US congressman Jefferson, famously caught with $90,000 in cash in his freezer, has been sentenced to 13 years for bribery and money laundering. The money, wrapped in foil and hidden in boxes of pie crust, were in fact bribes stored for a later moment. The fridge and freezer rank high in the list of [...]

Heard the story of criminals setting up their own ATM in town to get your card data and PIN number so they can plunder your account? It happened (and not just once). Experts call it a “Ghost ATM”. It is (too?) easy to buy an ATM, place it somewhere and wait for people to use [...]

According to Bloomberg, Hong Kong is the new target of U.S. prosecutors pursuing a global campaign against evaders of federal taxes, spurred by data acquired in their crackdown on Swiss banks. The push follows the government’s success in penetrating Swiss bank secrecy and learning from insiders how UBS AG helped Americans evade taxes. UBS, the [...]

Two alleged hackers in their twenties and an unknown “Hacker 3″ have been indicted on charges of hacking into a computer network operated by the Atlanta-based credit card processing company RBS WorldPay.
The indictment alleges that the group used sophisticated hacking techniques to compromise the data encryption that was used by RBS WorldPay to protect customer [...]