money laundering Archives

03
Aug

Evil Bananas: How Organized Crime Feeds Europe’s Drug Habit via Cocaine Smuggling

Urriolagoitia Miner / August 3, 2026
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Ecuador: Squeezed into Fruit-based Cocaine Smuggling Fruit, especially bananas, is notoriously perishable. They require refrigeration for the long journey from the ports of Ecuador, Peru, or Colombia to destinations in Europe or the Americas. It turns out that cocaine smuggling also does well in refrigerated containers. In 2025, for example, authorities at Portsmouth harbour in […]

16
Jul

Informal Value Transfer System (IVTS): How to Launder Money Without Transactions

Urriolagoitia Miner / July 16, 2026
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A History of Hawala and ‘Flying Money’ Many centuries ago, early human traders moved goods back and forth between China and the Middle East along a network of pathways known as the silk routes. These are often mis-named in modern times as The Silk Road, since it was not a single highway, but a widely […]

11
Jul

German Prosecutors File Charges in $345M ‘Operation Chargeback’

Ronen Shnidman / July 11, 2026
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German prosecutors filed charges last week in a EUR 300 million ($345 million) payments fraud case that affected 4.3 million credit cardholders from 193 countries between 2016 and 2021. The case, dubbed “Operation Chargeback,” provides a great window into the transnational, crime-for-hire nature of organized crime networks involved in payments fraud today. An international investigation […]

Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) for cash

14
Jun

Top 5 Things Law Enforcement Wants in SAR Reports

Urriolagoitia Miner / June 14, 2026
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One might never read about a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) in the news. Instead, you might hear about a successful insurance businessman who turned out to be mis-reporting his company’s financials while funneling money through shell corporations to fund his lifestyle. Reading about Chinese money laundering networks moving Mexican cartel money, you might wonder, along […]

05
May

Tackling Human Trafficking: Lessons from Case Studies

Urriolagoitia Miner / May 5, 2026
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Human trafficking is the act of taking a person across a border against their will, usually to exploit them for labor. The term applies both to when people are trafficked from city to city inside a country and when they are brought across international borders. Human smuggling, on the other hand, is voluntary on the […]

Huoine Group and Southeast Asia romance scams

03
Apr

PRC Extradites Huione Group Gangster Tied to Pig Butchering Scams

Ronen Shnidman / April 3, 2026
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Li Xiong, past chairman of the Huione Group, was extradited from Cambodia to China last week, in another blow towards organized crime in Southeast Asia focused on generating revenue from fraud schemes. The Huione Group was a corporate network of companies that enabled money laundering on a massive scale for scam centers in Southeast Asia […]

11
Mar

The 5 Step AML Intelligence Cycle

Urriolagoitia Miner / March 11, 2026
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Anti-money laundering (AML) professionals are often heard to lament filing piles of Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) that go into a proverbial black hole, never to be seen or heard from again. I may have lent my voice to that chorus over the years as well. A SAR is the result of an AML investigation where […]

03
Feb

Top 5 Differences Between Fraud Investigators and Anti-Money Laundering Analysts

Urriolagoitia Miner / February 3, 2026
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In the world of anti-financial crime professions, there are a few major disciplines that stand out and tend to define a career. One of these is anti-fraud. In recent years, fraud has become more well-known to the public. Any type of misrepresentation, lying, scheming, scamming or stealing credentials and identities in order to gain money […]

Los Angeles Fashion District flooded with piles of cash.

12
Jan

What Are the Career Prospects for an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Investigator?

Urriolagoitia Miner / January 12, 2026
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An anti-money laundering (AML) investigator is a person who decides if financial activity is suspicious or not. Typically, AML investigators work in a top-level department at financial institutions like banks, fintech companies, money remitters, and casinos. These individuals must review customer records, open-source information, and transaction activity to make a well-supported analytical decision. When activity […]

Evil Bananas: How Organized Crime Feeds Europe’s Drug Habit via Cocaine Smuggling

Informal Value Transfer System (IVTS): How to Launder Money Without Transactions

German Prosecutors File Charges in $345M ‘Operation Chargeback’

Top 5 Things Law Enforcement Wants in SAR Reports

Tackling Human Trafficking: Lessons from Case Studies

PRC Extradites Huione Group Gangster Tied to Pig Butchering Scams

The 5 Step AML Intelligence Cycle

Top 5 Differences Between Fraud Investigators and Anti-Money Laundering Analysts

What Are the Career Prospects for an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Investigator?

Instant Payments, Instant Losses: A Data.

BioCatch acquired by Visa for $2.4B

Evil Bananas: How Organized Crime Feeds.

When AI Detects Fraud, What Human.

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Instant Payments, Instant Losses:

BioCatch acquired by Visa

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