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A suspect who owed the Internal Revenue Service more than $1 million was sentenced to more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to illegally structuring financial transactions and conspiring to defraud the United States Government.The defendant’s spouse also pleaded guilty to conspiracy…

In a Florida case, a SAR filing led to the identification of additional fraud perpetrated by a subject already under investigation by special agents within the U.S. Secret Service’s (USSS) Tampa Field Office. From December 1996 through May 1997, investigators identified an individual who deposited…

Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) played a critical role in the indictment and guilty plea of a weight-loss doctor. The doctor ostensibly ran a weight-loss clinic, but in reality orchestrated a scheme to provide prescriptions for cash. In fact, innocent patients noticed that the doctor’s office…

In a case initiated based on the filing of SARs, a bank manager pled guilty to a nine-year fraud scheme to steal over a quarter of a million dollars from accounts of customers, including the bank manager’s sister, identified by the bank manager as individuals or businesses that would not miss the…

A retail store owner, who operated an unlicensed hawala (a form of an informal value transfer system), was sentenced to multiple months in prison and several years’ probation. The defendant pled guilty to failure to register as a money services business as required by FinCEN and to filing a false…

Case summary: In a key decision, a defendant went to trial after pleading not guilty to two counts of structuring. Notably, in this case, prosecutors did not bring money laundering charges against the defendant because there was no indication that the structured currency resulted from any illegal…

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…

An investigation of a possible violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was initiated following the filing of a SAR by a bank in New York. The SAR stated that an unnamed bank vice president in charge of the funds transfer program manipulated four payments to the Sudan totaling $…

A federal judge has ordered more than 24 years of prison time for a former loan officer who was found guilty on all eight counts of an indictment charging conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Several financial institutions identified unusual transactions related to the…

BSA records helped identify co-conspirators, accounts, and elements of a mortgage fraud scheme that may total as much as $7 million dollars in losses. SAR filings described transactions related to the fraud in both personal and business accounts belonging to the defendant in the case, and CTRs…