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A Suspicious Activity Report review team identified SARs filed by three different financial institutions within several months on the same subject, describing similar transactions involving structuring and the wire transfer of funds to an Eastern European country (Country A).According to…

ICE agents and analysts in a state in the Southwest developed information from a SAR that an out-of-state business was structuring deposits of large sums of cash and was operating as an unlicensed MSB. During a two-month period, this business made outgoing wire transfers totaling approximately $1.2…

An individual from Catlettsbury, Kentucky pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on May 19, 1999, to laundering $5.9 million in drug proceeds from the sale of marijuana in West Virginia and Kentucky. The indictment alleged that the individual, his brothers, his stepbrother, and three other suspects…

A man accused of managing an international theft ring involving more than $1 million has been indicted and faces charges including fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors allege that the defendant stole the identities of hundreds of people and used his stored-value card business to launder and…

A defendant was sentenced to serve multiple months in prison followed by several years probation, after pleading guilty to narcotics trafficking charges and structuring financial transactions to evade the currency reporting requirements in connection with a marijuana growing operation. 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…

The owner of a service company was sentenced to three years in prison and two years supervised release following a guilty plea to structuring financial transactions to evade reporting requirements. An officer of the company pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return and was sentenced to 18 months…

A Suspicious Activity Report filed by a financial institution led to a bank fraud investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Inspector General. The Suspicious Activity Report implicated a loan secretary in the misapplication of…

A U.S. district judge sentenced a financial manager to 10 years in custody for using two financial institutions to launder funds from an embezzlement he orchestrated while working for an Indian tribal government entity receiving Federal funds. He was charged with stealing more than $180,000 over a…

In a case started from SARs, investigators executing a search warrant found $1.8 million of unreported income stashed in a closet. Although the defendants legally earned the funds, they established a system to convert business revenues to cash with the explicit purpose of evading taxes. SARs…