New York City investigators are concerned that several start-up companies selling mobile payment products may be giving criminals an easy means to defraud banks and individuals.
Less than 10 percent of banks have joined their efforts to fight fraud and money laundering despite calls by the U.S. financial intelligence unit to do so, according to an upcoming report.
Compliance officers face challenges anytime two financial institutions merge. But when one bank buys up the assets and the problems of a failed competitor, the hurdles can exponentially increase.
U.S. investigators arrested the former chief executive officer of a Manhattan-based bank Monday for allegedly embezzling money from a fraudulent loan and attempting to cheat the government out of federal bailout funds.
Massive spending to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been accompanied by a surge in fraud, corruption and money laundering involving military personnel and contractors.
The formation of a federal task force aimed at fighting financial crime will likely mean more money laundering investigations at banks, according to a U.S. Treasury Department official.
Bank of New York Mellon and the Russian government finalized an expected settlement Thursday of a lawsuit that had sought $22.5 billion for tax revenue lost to a money laundering scheme.
Federal regulators are evaluating the merits of anti-money laundering compliance staff in an effort to ensure that unqualified individuals weren't hired to cut costs, according to bank officials.
New Year's Eve may have come and gone and all of the post-celebration headaches faded, but financial institutions are going to need many more months to recover from 2008.
Banks that improperly handle government money, including bailout funds and taxes, could increasingly receive hefty fines under a law rarely evoked today in the financial sector, say legal experts.
The investigation into a $50 billion securities fraud by a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market may mean more scrutiny for banks that took him as a client, according to a financial investigator.
White collar crime prosecutions in August have dropped nearly 20 percent in the past five years and nearly three percent since 2007, according to government data compiled by a Syracuse University organization.
Banks should streamline their compliance efforts by coordinating their anti-money laundering and anti-fraud programs, the director of the United States' financial intelligence unit said Tuesday.
Individuals and businesses with bank accounts in the United States being pursued by foreign governments as tax cheats could face money laundering charges in the U.S., lawyers say.
With the Justice Department and SEC taking a more aggressive approach to enforcing the act, there has been a dramatic increase in investigations and enforcement actions, lawyers and compliance professionals say. Many of the violations are associated with money laundering cases.
The FDIC, in its Ombudsman report issued Sept. 5, said it is working with other federal financial regulatory agencies to develop a tool that will allow banks to more easily check job candidates against their various lists of individuals who have been fined or sanctioned.
Oregon residents Laurent Barnabe and Douglas Ferguson were sentenced on money laundering and other charges for their role in a Ponzi scheme run through an offshore bank based in Grenada.
For a whistleblower program to be effective, employees have to believe that any action they take will produce results and that they will be protected from retaliation, experts say.
Financial institutions have been slow to adopt biometric technologies that identify people by physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, as part of their information security programs.
In a nonprosecution agreement reached Friday, United Bank for Africa admitted that it falsified employment data to stymie criminal and civil investigations.