Criminal empires continue to accumulate wealth in spite of 2020’s global recession. The United Nations estimates up to $2 Trillion is laundered annually across the globe, and continued financial deregulations will likely increase this year’s estimate. Criminals attempt to illegally circulate assets through banks like yours, and your Anti-Money Laundering (AML) analysts must be well-prepared to stop them.
Automated AML detectors monitor bank accounts for patterns of suspicious activity. Criminals, however, can often discreetly place, layer, and integrate “dirty money” through shell businesses. Imitating assets’ circulation patterns of legitimate companies, shell business operators engage in large “transactions” involving non-existent or worthless goods and services to reduce suspicion. With this in mind, AML analysts must investigate crime on a case-by-case basis.
Illicit financial circulation is the major consequence of “shell businesses” and money-laundering. Illegally-obtained assets fund crimes worldwide, and transnational criminal organizations are often the ultimate beneficiaries of these assets. American banks are also legally required to comply with the Bank Secrecy and Anti-Money Laundering Acts. Failing to uncover money-laundering can land a financial institution in serious legal trouble.
Your financial institution’s AML, Risk, and Compliance analysts can leverage Pipl SEARCH to investigate and uncover money-laundering and suspected shell businesses. By typing the name or contact information of a “business owner” into Pipl SEARCH, you are able to probe an unmatched depth and breadth of the suspect’s public-facing identity information. From there, your decision to suspend the bad actor’s account can be made quickly and accurately. To learn more, read our latest whitepaper, Online Identity and the Digital Economy of Tomorrow.
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