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Six defendants pled guilty and received prison time for defrauding investors in a case that started when a securities firm noticed suspect transactions and reported the activity to law enforcement. The defendants created a bogus investment scheme, marketed it over the Internet, and defrauded nearly…

A proactive SAR review task force identified a record that described structuring in an account of an individual who was subsequently found to not be involved in the suspected criminal activity. The investigators began focusing on the subject who caused the structured transaction noted in the SAR.…

A Suspicious Activity Report detailing more than $4.6 million worth of fraudulent activity associated with electronics sales over the Internet prompted a SAR review team to initiate a case on a subject known to have been previously identified with fraudulent activity. The filer reported that the…

A suspect who owed the Internal Revenue Service more than $1 million was sentenced to more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to illegally structuring financial transactions and conspiring to defraud the United States Government.The defendant’s spouse also pleaded guilty to conspiracy…

In a Florida case, a SAR filing led to the identification of additional fraud perpetrated by a subject already under investigation by special agents within the U.S. Secret Service’s (USSS) Tampa Field Office. From December 1996 through May 1997, investigators identified an individual who deposited…

Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) played a critical role in the indictment and guilty plea of a weight-loss doctor. The doctor ostensibly ran a weight-loss clinic, but in reality orchestrated a scheme to provide prescriptions for cash. In fact, innocent patients noticed that the doctor’s office…

In a case initiated based on the filing of SARs, a bank manager pled guilty to a nine-year fraud scheme to steal over a quarter of a million dollars from accounts of customers, including the bank manager’s sister, identified by the bank manager as individuals or businesses that would not miss the…

A retail store owner, who operated an unlicensed hawala (a form of an informal value transfer system), was sentenced to multiple months in prison and several years’ probation. The defendant pled guilty to failure to register as a money services business as required by FinCEN and to filing a false…

Case summary: In a key decision, a defendant went to trial after pleading not guilty to two counts of structuring. Notably, in this case, prosecutors did not bring money laundering charges against the defendant because there was no indication that the structured currency resulted from any illegal…

Two SARs filed by a central Florida bank resulted in the initiation of a money laundering investigation of a fraudulent securities dealer operating a prime bank fraud scheme. The SARs reported unusual account activity and international wire transfers in the tens of millions of dollars. The case…