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Guidance
Guidance to Financial Institutions on the Increasing Money Laundering Threat Involving Illicit Iranian Activity
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is issuing this advisory to U.S. financial institutions so that they may guard against threats of illicit Iranian activity related to money laundering, terrorist financing and weapons of mass destruction proliferation financing. The Financial Action Task…
Guidance
Interpretation of Suspicious Activity Reporting Requirements to Permit the Unitary Filing of Suspicious Activity and Blocking Reports
This FinCEN interpretive guidance clarifies that reports filed with the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) of blocked transactions with Specially Designated Global Terrorists, Specially Designated Terrorists, Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Specially Designated…
Case Examples
BSA Records Help Dismantle Oxycodone Ring
Members of a multi-state drug trafficking and money laundering organization have pled guilty to multiple counts of narcotics trafficking and money laundering. The organization trafficked in Oxycodone and the movement of large amounts of money between two states. The organization was identified over…
Case Examples
SAR Suspect Convicted of Forging U.S. Treasury Checks
A bank filed a SAR reporting the deposit of U.S. Treasury checks to an account held by a deceased customer (a retired government employee) receiving monthly retirement benefits. The bank determined that its customer died in 1998. For two and one half years following the customer’s death, her…
Case Examples
Three Individuals Convicted in Phantom Bank Scheme
The IRS-Criminal Investigation and the FBI conducted an investigation of several individuals involved in soliciting investments and deposits in a financial institution that falsely claimed Indian tribal authority and offshore-style banking privacy. The defendants used the Internet to solicit…
Case Examples
Local Municipality Case Example (Failure to Follow Reporting Requirements)
In early 2012, FinCEN conducted outreach to all of its state and local law enforcement partners, and asked for cases where FinCEN data played a useful role in their investigations. Below, in their own words, is an example of how FinCEN's stakeholders use FinCEN data. It has been edited only for…
Case Examples
Suspicious Activity Report Initiates Material Support of Terrorism Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation initiated a Material Support of Terrorism investigation based on a Suspicious Activity Report filed by a bank detailing a series of overseas financial transactions totaling millions of dollars. Two of the participants in these transactions were a United States…
Case Examples
Organized Crime Network Attacked With the Help of SARs
The U.S. Customs Service in Chicago conducted an investigation of a Russian and Lithuanian organized crime group that was heavily involved in the smuggling of stolen luxury vehicles out of the U.S. into Europe. Independent analysis of a SAR filing showed suspicious behavior that related to the…
Case Examples
Bogus Life Insurance Investment Vehicles Identified through SAR Filing
The defendants in this case first settled a civil suit with the government concerning the sale of $7 million worth of fraudulent “prime-bank” note investments to investors nationwide. In the scheme, investigators found that less than half the money was used to pay fictitious investment returns to…
Case Examples
Suspicious Activity Report Credited with Revealing Bank Fraud Scheme and Unraveling Auto Insurance Fraud Ring that Nets Principal Defendant Nearly $1.3 Million and a Nine-Year Prison Term
In a case initiated from a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR), investigators found perpetrators were operating two separate fraud schemes. The first scheme, a check-kiting fraud, was only possible because of the complicity provided by the chief defendant’s wife who worked at the bank where the fraud…