6min chapter

TED Business cover image

What you can do to stop economic crime | Hanjo Seibert

TED Business

CHAPTER

Criminal Activities and Money Laundering in Popular Movies

Exploring the world of economic crime, this chapter looks at scenarios reminiscent of spy movies where criminals engage in illegal activities involving large sums of money, delving into types such as money laundering, fraud, and terrorism financing. The speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing and addressing hidden criminal activities in diverse sectors like sports clubs and counterfeit luxury goods.

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Speaker 2
I'm Shirley Ling, host of Say More from the Boston Globe. Our new series is Burnout. We'll hear from Cal Newport, Krista Tibbitt, and more. We'll talk about breaking bad habits and forming new ones. The cure for burnout is all of us caring for each other. Say More from the Boston wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine
Speaker 1
any movie like James Bond, Mission Impossible or Jack Ryan. And every of these movies has this one moment. The villain is planning to buy illegal weapons, take out a national energy grid or hijack a satellite. And that undertaking an insane amount of money. That always happens in either of two ways. Scenario one, three black SUVs driving up a dusty desert road, three other SUVs already waiting at the exchange spot, where suitcases of cash are being exchanged for weapons between criminals. Or scenario number two, abandoned old warehouse. A hacker in a hoodie asking the villain where to transfer the money. And within seconds, hundreds of millions are being transferred from accounts all over the world. This is a very exciting movie plot, good versus evil, loads of money, exotic locations, and a superhero who saves the world in the last second. And now imagine this was the real life. We all know that the one superhero does not exist. But through my work in combating economic crime, I can assure you that the suitcases with cash and the hackers, they are reality, and they are on the loose every single day. For over a decade, I'm advising banks and companies on how to turn off the money tab for criminals. I get to see the underground economies created by gangsters and how they finance their operations. But that doesn't make me the next James Bond, even if you may have hoped. Yeah. Sorry. Unfortunately, to master this challenge, we all need to understand what economic crime is. An economic crime is a wide field. It includes money proceeds from drug trafficking, human trafficking and sexual exploitation, fraud and cyber crimes, tax evasion and all those offshore tax havens, piracy, corruption, terrorism. And what all these scenarios have in common that they need their profits laundered. And money laundering is complex. Criminals want to make it complex to hide the connection between the money and the underlying crime. And that disconnection between money and its dirty source, that's called money laundering. And money laundering is big. According to the United Nations, the amount of money laundered every year can be as high as $2 trillion. In stacked $1 notes, this is 57% of the way to the moon. Or in other words, that's more money than Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, and JP Morgan generate in revenues together every year. So, what can we do? Let me take you on a journey of scenarios that I've come across in my work. So those scenarios, you can learn to identify places where criminal activity might be hiding. Let's consider you're at a sports event, say, a soccer match. You pay the entry tickets and food in cash. Did you know that in the past, authorities have found that criminals have had ownership stakes in some sports clubs? Remember our criminal from before who just sold illegal weapons, and now sits on suitcases full of cash? If he or she owned a sports club, it would be easy for him or her to bring in the money and record unexpected ticket sales. And invent any reason for it, let's say, the good weather today. And I get to see similar when working for banks who often find in sports clubs but need to make sure to not support criminals. And fraud in sports has been investigated by Europol. However, criminal activity in sports has not gone away. So what can you do to make it for criminals to abuse sports clubs? As a concrete action, pay with a debit or credit card. To reduce cash ratios, cash doesn't leave a trace. A credit card does, and hence creates transparency. And if you really want to step it up, you request an official receipt for every purchase which you now made by cart. Yes, even the single hot dog. The funny thing is, you don't even need to keep the receipt. Its only purpose is to ensure that the sale is officially recorded. And by the way, the same can happen in your favorite restaurant just around the corner, or any other cash -intensive business. Let's move to luxury products. Those are often sold at a good discount, especially online. And come on, hey, we're all excited about good bar gains, aren't we? It's commonly known that the fashion industry is flooded with fake products. But did you know that counterfeits often have profit margins of up to 2,000 %? And this even gets worse if the of those 2,000 % is a criminal organization or even a terrorist. In 2015, the Charlie Hebdo headquarters here in Paris was attacked, leaving 12 people dead and 11 injured. The attack was partially financed through the sale of fake products, and I get to see similar examples when working for banks who are required to monitor their clients' transactions and spot irregularities like the sale of fake products. So, what can you do to make it harder for criminals to sell fake products?

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