On December 12, 2002, the Delaware State Police obtained a federal conviction for bank fraud against a former bank employee. The subject was sentenced to two years federal incarceration and an additional five years federal probation. The Delaware State Police received information from a local…
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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…
Through a proactive review of SARs, law enforcement found that the purveyor of illicit devices structured millions of dollars of proceeds into a financial institution. The devices were a violation of state law and hence led to a charge of money laundering. In the indictment, prosecutors sought…
The defendants in this case first settled a civil suit with the government concerning the sale of $7 million worth of fraudulent “prime-bank” note investments to investors nationwide. In the scheme, investigators found that less than half the money was used to pay fictitious investment returns…
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…
In a case initiated based on the filing of a Suspicious Activity Report, a former investment officer for a bank was sentenced to two years in prison and three years supervised release and was ordered to make restitution of almost half a million dollars. He pled guilty to embezzlement by a bank…
Case one. A multi-agency investigation of several subjects engaged in a Ponzi scheme, in which 5,000 investors were defrauded of $67 million, was aided by the filing of a SAR by a financial institution in Hawaii. Proceeds of the scheme were deposited into numerous accounts at various business…
Information gleaned from a review of SARs filed by financial institutions identified two brothers who are under investigation for operating an illegal money remitter business. USCS agents have documented in excess of $12 million being wired to foreign locations, primarily Singapore and Indonesia…
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…
Investigators opened a case after receiving a call from a family friend of a wealthy elderly woman who suspected the woman was being taken advantage of financially. With this information the law enforcement officials proceeded to research BSA documents and found SARs describing structuring on…