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Two SARs filed by a central Florida bank resulted in the initiation of a money laundering investigation of a fraudulent securities dealer operating a prime bank fraud scheme. The SARs reported unusual account activity and international wire transfers in the tens of millions of dollars. The case…
In 2006, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia announced “Operation Rainmaker,” a major, multi-national federal drug and money laundering investigation initiated by ICE-Atlanta that culminated with 24 arrests in the United States and Colombia. The investigation…
A man with a compulsive gambling addiction embezzled millions of dollars from a public utility and lived the life of a “high roller” for several years before being caught. The defendant established several shell corporations to bilk a county for water well capacity rights.
As part of the…
An individual approached federal authorities and reported a story about drug smugglers. Agents questioned the individual's story and sought to authenticate his statements with queries in the BSA database. They instead found over a dozen CTRs and SARs that indicated the individual was involved in…
Case summary: A woman was sentenced in 2010 after pleading guilty to a structuring charge resulting from the theft of funds from her elderly mother. Although the defendant received a relatively light sentence, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case noted that structuring was the only…
In late 2006, a United States Attorney’s Office secured a guilty plea in a major racketeering case involving trash collectors and organized crime. The multi-state investigation included ten federal, state, and local agencies and resulted in a multiple-count indictment. Hundreds of BSA records…
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…
In February 2002, SAR information provided by an investment account firm revealed wire transfers in excess of $500,000 originated from an individual's account, through a trading company in Dubai, UAE, for transfer to Iran. Investigation disclosed the account holder had made comments to the…