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…
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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…
An investigation into hedge fund fraud that was initiated from a SAR resulted in guilty pleas, forfeiture, and in the case of the ringleader, a lengthy prison sentence. The prosecution began several years ago when a federal grand jury charged four men in connection with the fraud. All of the…
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…