In December 2002, the New York office of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s El Dorado Task Force identified numerous Suspicious Activity Reports that showed a pattern of suspicious financial transactions conducted by a company in the New York area. The company was identified as…
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In 2003, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents initiated an investigation of several non-profit organizations in the United States. These were all registered as tax-exempt organizations. The investigation revealed the organizations were operating as illegal wire remitting…
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…
In what a federal prosecutor called “the most blatant currency structuring case” he had seen, a federal judge sentenced an 82-year-old man in March 2007 to 15 months in prison and ordered him to pay $110,000 in restitution to American victims of an international lottery scheme. The defendant had…
SARs filed by a bank resulted in the initiation of an investigation by the IRS. Three (3) family members pled guilty to conspiring to obstruct the IRS from ascertaining their true income tax liabilities for tax years 1978 through 1995 by filing false tax returns and structuring currency…
The IRS-Criminal Investigation and the FBI conducted an investigation of several individuals involved in soliciting investments and deposits in a financial institution that falsely claimed Indian tribal authority and offshore-style banking privacy. The defendants used the Internet to solicit…
An IRS investigation in Virginia was initiated on the owner of a travel agency for currency structuring charges after the analysis of SAR and CTR filings. In addition to the travel agency, the defendant operated a money transmittal business that was wiring funds to his business interests in Lima…
A jury found the defendant guilty of structuring after a pattern of transactions designed to evade currency transaction reporting requirements was identified. Prosecutors did not allege that the structured funds were derived from criminal activity.
The jury found the defendant guilty of…
A woman who continually conducted large cash transactions at casinos and structured those funds at her local bank pleaded guilty to a Title 12, Chapter 21 violation concerning record keeping requirements. Prosecutors charged her with a misdemeanor violation because they did not find any evidence…
In a case where Federal prosecutors stepped in to help local law enforcement, BSA records identified millions of dollars generated through an illegal gambling operation. State authorities had few tools to punish the defendants because the state charges were only misdemeanors. To shut down the…