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Information from SARs helped unravel a complex fraudulent banking scheme in which victims lost thousands of dollars to fake investments and a multinational financial institution had its identity stolen.
The scheme to defraud investors allegedly started in late 2002, when an individual…
In a case initiated from a proactive review of SARs, an individual pled guilty to fraud when authorities discovered a scheme to defraud individuals and businesses out of millions of dollars. The SARs which triggered the investigation described in detail transactions related to the fraud. In…
In a case that is part of a large-scale investigation into organized retail theft (ORT) rings, a federal jury convicted an individual of multiple counts related to laundering the proceeds from the criminal activity. Investigators found Suspicious Activity Reports filed on the defendant very…
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…
A federal credit union filed a SAR and helped initiate an investigation into a counterfeit check scheme that had similarities with Nigerian 419 fraud schemes. These frauds, designated as such because of the section of the Nigerian criminal code that prohibits them, often promise substantial…
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…
In April 2002, predicated by numerous SAR filings by two large banks, the FBI initiated an investigation into an investment scam. The SARs were filed on numerous personal and business accounts with no obvious relationships to one another. Bank personnel eventually linked all accounts through the…
The United States Secret Service, New York Field Office, seized over $5.3 million from a correspondent account for a bank headquartered in Nigeria. Investigative leads derived from Bank Secrecy Act data determined that this account was actually owned by the Nigerian bank and operated by the bank…
Federal prosecutors used information directly derived from FinCEN records to help convict a repeat drug trafficker. The wealth accumulated by the defendant through illicit drug sales became evident with the filing of numerous CTRs documenting transactions at casinos, a Form 8300 filed in…
The deadline to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts form ("FBAR") with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, in accordance with 31 CFR 103.24, for each calendar year is on or before June 30th of the following year. Thus, the deadline to file the FBAR for calendar year 2001 is…
