Financial Crime Matters

Justine Walker and Craig Timm discuss top financial crime threats in 2024 like budget cuts, cyber-enabled crime, global conflict fallout. They highlight responses and ways for institutions to prepare. Insights on AI, malware, AML, sanctions, crypto, and more.

Kieran talks with Grant Rabenn, Director, Financial Crimes Legal at Coinbase. Grant, a former federal prosecutor who handled some of the Department of Justice’s earliest crypto cases, discusses the promise of blockchain offerings, while acknowledging the industry’s need to work with regulators to stem their use in financial crime and money laundering. During their conversation, Grant also touches some of the typologies for the illicit use of crypto currency that Coinbase encounters and the value of using a variety of blockchain forensics providers to trace crypto transactions.

Kieran talks with Zeke Faux, author of critically acclaimed “Number Go Up,” a comprehensive look at cryptocurrency, DeFi, and NFTs. Zeke, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Bloomberg News, discusses the trek he undertook to understand the boom and sometimes bust of various blockchain offerings. It was a journey that included a New York harbor NFT “ApeFest,” time in the Philippines with erstwhile Axis Infinity gamers who lost everything, a visit to a hotel in Cambodia attached to a “pig butchering” operation, and finally a marathon interview with Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas days before his arrest.

Kieran talks with Kenneth Rijock, a former Miami-based lawyer who spent a decade as a bag man for drug-traffickers, investing their cash in accounts in the Caribbean and other offshore secrecy havens. Ken describes some of the classic methods he used for laundering money and how law enforcement ultimately caught up with him. Following a prison term, Ken reinvented himself as an anti-money laundering advisor to law enforcement and subsequently the private sector. His story is also told in his book, “The Laundryman,” published in 2012.

Kieran talks with Carly Yoost, CEO and founder of the Child Rescue Coalition, which has created technology that enables law enforcement to identify instances of online child exploitation and locate its perpetrators. During their discussion, Carly details the scope of online child exploitation and how the Coalition provides tools and training to law enforcement in 98 countries that has led to the arrest of over 14,700 child predators.

James Barnacle, Chief of the Financial Crimes Section of the FBI, and Christopher Soyez, Assistant Section Chief, discuss the FBI's efforts to recover scam proceeds. They emphasize the role of banks' suspicious activity reports in successful investigations of COVID-19 scams. They also explore topics such as Medicare fraud, money laundering operations, and the challenges of dealing with fraud money in cryptocurrency.

Kieran talks with Kenneth A. Blanco, Chief Compliance Officer for the Financial Crimes Unit at Citigroup, who is also a former Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) director and before that held several senior roles within the U.S. Department of Justice. Ken and Kieran discuss the challenges of being FinCEN’s chief during the COVID-19 epidemic and his perspective on the Anti-Money Laundering and Corporate Transparency Acts created and passed during his tenure. Having now served within both the public and private sectors in the fight against financial crime, Ken also talks about what regulators, law enforcement and AFC professionals at financial institutions don’t understand about each other and the importance of them joining forces in public private partnerships.

Kieran talks with Seoyoung Kim, Associate Professor of Finance, Department Chair, at Santa Clara University, about the promise and possible perils of decentralized finance. They discuss the recent implosion of several cryptocurrency exchanges and stablecoin minters and the great legal and judicial debate now raging over the regulation of digital assets. In detailing some of the regulatory definitional claims now being adjudicated in U.S. courts, Seoyoung argues that the contested offerings are all analogous to financial instruments already regulated under the extant centralized finance system. As a result, she says that the proper application of rules from the centralized finance world are sufficient for oversight of DeFi. In concluding, Seoyoung says that executing transactions on a publicly transparent blockchain, rather than on exchanges that facilitate money laundering and fraud via mixers and tumblers or privacy coins, is as essential as regulation to the ongoing integrity and promise of DeFI.

Kieran talks with Rick Small, Director Financial Crimes Program, at Truist, Dan Soto, Chief Compliance Officer, Ally Financial, and John Byrne, Executive Vice President, AML RightSource, about what’s been achieved in the past 40 years in the fight against financial crime and what challenges lay ahead. In anticipation of receiving the “ACAMS Lifetime Achievement Award” at The Assembly in Las Vegas in October, Rick, Dan, and John discuss the successes and shortcomings of past Bank Secrecy Act regulation, as well as what’s good and what’s bad in the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 and the Corporate Transparency Act. Drawing on nearly 150 years of collective public and private sector experience fighting financial crime, the three old friends celebrate the rise of the AML community, the establishment of AFC as a profession and their association with ACAMS since its inception. In concluding, they offer advice to the next wave of anti-financial crime professionals who will face variations on old crime typologies and new scenarios connected to AI and other technologies adopted by industry, law enforcement and, sadly, savvy criminals. ---------- This Financial Crime Matters episode is sponsored by: NICE Actimize - https://www.niceactimize.com SAS -https://www.sas.com/fraud Fenergo - https://www.fenergo.com

Kieran talks with Willem Schudel, Head of Department, Financial Crime Supervision (AML/TF) at the Central Bank of the Netherlands, live from The Assembly Europe, ACAMS’ annual conference, held this year in Dublin. Willem discusses the Dutch Central Bank’s preparations for the coming of the European Union’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority, or AMLA, and the bank’s latest initiatives with regulated entities, including expectations they adopt technology that will identify criminal activity and reinforce the risked-based approach. ---------- This Financial Crime Matters episode is sponsored by: NICE Actimize CDD-X - https://www.niceactimize.com SAS - https://www.sas.com/fraud Fenergo - https://www.fenergo.com