News

# November 9, 2026

Copenhagen court fines Nordea DKK 155 million, far below the DKK 6.6 billion prosecutors sought

On November 9, 2026, Copenhagen City Court fined Nordea Denmark DKK 155 million for breaking Denmark’s anti-money laundering law. Reports say the court found that the bank disregarded warnings about transactions to currency exchange offices in Copenhagen. It also failed to investigate more than 200,000 alerts that had been archived in bulk and should have been looked at more closely.

The result is far below what prosecutors wanted. They had asked for a fine of DKK 6.6 billion, while Nordea had argued for acquittal. A prosecution statement said Nordea was acquitted on significant parts of the case, and that prosecutors would study the judgment and consider an appeal. The case began in 2016, when the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority reported the bank to police. Nordea was indicted on July 5, 2024.

For investigators, the lesson is about monitoring. An alert that is closed in bulk without review is a control that exists on paper only, and so is a warning about high-risk customers that nobody acts on. See how the bank’s wider record is laid out in the Nordea case file.

Related: Currency exchanges and MSBs · Nordea Anti-Money Laundering Cases

# November 6, 2026

FinCEN cuts MEXC Global off from US funds transfers, citing $16 billion in illicit flows

On November 6, 2026, FinCEN issued an order that stops U.S. financial institutions from transmitting funds from or to MEXC Global, a convertible virtual currency exchange. The order rests on section 9714(a) of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act. It takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register and does not change existing Bank Secrecy Act or OFAC duties.

FinCEN says that between May 2021 and May 2026 the exchange facilitated at least $16 billion in funds tied to sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity. Its figures include nearly $1.5 billion linked to Russian sanctions evasion, $232 million in direct dealings with sanctioned entities, and about $1 billion in direct transactions with more than 40 Iranian exchangers. FinCEN also says the platform kept handling transactions for Garantex and its successor Grinex as late as June 2026, despite saying it bans users from Iran and North Korea. MEXC’s side is not in the release.

FinCEN describes the exchange as processing over $1 billion a day as of September 2026. A gap between stated policy and actual flows is what regulators test. See how investigators trace crypto flows.

Related: Sanctions evasion · Stablecoins and OTC brokers · Garantex Exchange Takedown

# November 6, 2026

Treasury sanctions eight Canadian money services businesses over Iran crypto flows and drug-cash laundering

On November 6, 2026, the U.S. Treasury designated eight money services businesses in Canada as part of Operation Economic Outcast. Treasury says the firms exchange Iranian rials and other currencies for digital assets, and that many dealt with sanctioned Iranian exchanges and with crypto addresses linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The action was coordinated with FinCEN, FINTRAC (Canada’s financial intelligence unit) and the DEA.

Treasury also says several of the firms handled drug money. In its account, couriers brought bulk cash to exchange businesses in the Vancouver and Toronto areas, which converted it to digital assets and sent it abroad. It links this to Ryan Wedding, a Canadian drug trafficker already sanctioned by OFAC and taken into U.S. custody in January 2026. Treasury adds that some of the firms changed business names and addresses to avoid detection.

The firms were designated under an Iran digital asset sector order. These are allegations, not court findings. One red flag is a small currency business whose crypto wallets show large flows with sanctioned exchanges. See how exchange businesses are misused.

Related: Currency exchanges and MSBs · Sanctions evasion

# November 5, 2026

FATF publishes its first report tracing the money flows of scam compounds

On November 5, 2026, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published a report that follows the money behind scam compounds. FATF describes them as networked, industrialised and transnational criminal infrastructure. They may run from large physical sites, smaller or decentralised cells, and specialist service providers tied together by common controllers and financial systems.

The report traces the full lifecycle of the proceeds. Victims send funds, which are collected through bank accounts, digital wallets and money mule networks. The money then moves through many transactions and jurisdictions to hide its origin, before being cashed out or invested in assets and businesses. Part of the profit is often reinvested to keep the operation growing. FATF also issued principles that call on countries to target the wider criminal ecosystem rather than single sites or transactions, and to act quickly across borders. The Tribune, citing the news agency ANI, reports that the report estimates losses of tens of billions of dollars a year. FATF says some enablers are hard to replace, which makes them high-value points for investigators.

See how victim funds are turned into clean assets.

Related: Laundering pig butchering scam proceeds · Funnel accounts and money mules · Huione and Prince Group

# November 5, 2026

Treasury sanctions 45 more targets in the Prince Group scam network's corporate web

On November 5, 2026, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned four individuals and 41 entities that it says support the business network of the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization. The group was sanctioned earlier, on October 14, 2025 and June 23, 2026, over cyber-enabled fraud, money laundering and human trafficking. OFAC also designated Chui Kok Wa, a Malaysian man it says led scammers in Madagascar who took more than $400,000 equivalent from Americans.

Treasury said the new targets managed offshore companies, hid beneficial ownership and gave administrative and financial services to senior Prince Group figures. Examples include Hong Kong lending and wine companies held through British Virgin Islands holding companies, and Cambodian firms co-directed with an already-sanctioned executive. Treasury also said one executive’s wife received a Tokyo mansion after the 2025 sanctions, and that some targets helped evade those earlier sanctions.

The release says scam proceeds were laundered through shell companies, offshore holding companies, nominee directors and digital asset transactions. Designations are allegations, not court findings. Layers of nominee directors and holding companies are a classic red flag. See how shell companies hide ownership.

Related: Shell companies and nominees · Laundering pig butchering scam proceeds · Huione and Prince Group

# November 4, 2026

Treasury sanctions India-based network selling fake ship flags to Iranian oil tankers

On November 4, 2026, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned an India-based network it says supplied fake ship registrations to tankers carrying Iranian oil. The action is part of Treasury’s Operation Economic Outcast. OFAC added Suniel Kumar Sharma and his spouse, Jaspreet Preeti Shahid, along with a group of companies, to the sanctions list. Treasury also named a Singapore-based registry, Eswatini Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry, and a Türkiye-based ground-handling firm that serves sanctioned Iranian airlines.

Treasury said the network posed as the registries of real countries, including Aruba, Guyana and Mali, to issue false flags and maritime certificates. Many of the “registries” were reportedly just purchased web domains and websites with no link to the countries named. Nominee directors and shell businesses were used to run the group on paper. Treasury said falsely flagged ships lack valid liability insurance, which could leave coastal economies exposed to billions of dollars in damages.

OFAC also published an alert to industry on the risks of dealing with falsely flagged vessels. Treasury listed no transaction amounts in its release, and the designations are allegations of sanctions violations, not court findings. Checking a ship’s claimed flag against the real national registry is one basic control. See sanctions evasion for how it differs from laundering.

Related: Sanctions evasion

# November 3, 2026

AUSTRAC backs AFP case against alleged $123 million laundering network using shell companies and crypto

On November 3, 2026, AUSTRAC, Australia’s financial intelligence agency, described its role in a Taskforce Avarus investigation into a network suspected of laundering more than $123 million for several organised crime syndicates. Taskforce Avarus is a multi-agency effort led by the Australian Federal Police (AFP). The AFP began the investigation in February 2026.

The AFP says it will allege the network sold laundering services to other criminals. It is accused of converting criminal cash into cryptocurrency, or sending it offshore through shell companies acting as “corporate money mules.” On October 27, officers searched homes in Strathfield and Burwood and seized an estimated $750,000 in cash, luxury handbags and watches, and a cash-counting machine. A 40-year-old Sydney man was charged with two counts of recklessly dealing with proceeds of crime and refused bail. The AFP alleges he controlled shell company bank accounts used to move millions of dollars. The allegations have not been tested in court, and the investigation is ongoing.

AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas called this “crime as a service”: specialist networks that give other criminals the means to move and disguise money. He said each movement of funds also creates financial information that investigators can connect. Learn how financial intelligence units turn that data into leads.

Related: Shell companies and nominees · Funnel accounts and money mules

# November 3, 2026

Venezuelan national sentenced to 12 years for laundering over $1 billion through banks, crypto and shell companies

A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced Jorge Figueira, 60, a Venezuelan national who lived in Miami, to 12 years in prison on November 3, 2026, for conspiracy to launder money. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia said Figueira laundered billions of dollars for many illicit clients, including drug trafficking organizations. He also agreed to a $1 billion money judgment.

According to court documents, the network used bank accounts, cryptocurrency exchange accounts, private crypto wallets and shell companies to move money into and out of the United States. Prosecutors said funds were converted to cryptocurrency and sent through a series of digital wallets, then to liquidity providers that exchanged the crypto for dollars. The dollars went into Figueira’s bank accounts and on to the intended recipient. Prosecutors said the steps were meant to hide the nature of the funds from law enforcement.

The Justice Department said more than a billion dollars moved through one identified wallet and various financial accounts. Most inbound funds came from crypto trading platforms. Most outbound payments went to businesses and individuals in the United States and abroad, including in Colombia, China, Panamá and Mexico.

Investigators look for accounts that act as pass-throughs for large volumes with no clear business purpose. See how shell companies are used and spotted.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# October 30, 2026

FATF removes four countries from its grey list and targets scam compounds

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) ended its October 28–30, 2026 plenary in Paris by removing Bulgaria, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Monaco from its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, often called the grey list. FATF said each had completed its action plan on time and passed an on-site visit. It expressed significant concern about the pace of progress in Vietnam, which remains listed and could face next steps if it does not improve by the next plenary. Iran, North Korea and Myanmar stay on the call-for-action list, and FATF again urged Myanmar to address fraud and scam activity coming from the country.

The plenary also approved a report on money flows tied to scam compounds, due to be published the following week, and launched a targeted review of how well countries with large crypto sectors apply FATF’s virtual asset rules. Results of that review are due in June and October 2027. Mutual evaluation reports for Mexico and the United States were adopted too, with publication planned for December 2026.

Listing matters because banks treat grey-listed countries as higher risk. See how the system works on the FATF page.

# October 30, 2026

FinCEN alerts banks to $8 billion in suspicious foreign-agent-directed wires

On October 30, 2026, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued an alert urging financial institutions to watch for suspicious activity in cross-border payments handled by U.S.-based money services businesses (MSBs). FinCEN said its review of Bank Secrecy Act reporting found more than $8 billion in suspicious payments directed by foreign agents between 2021 and 2025.

The concern is how these arrangements work. A U.S. money transmitter often uses agents abroad. A foreign agent can instruct the U.S. firm to pay a third party in another country, which can hide who ultimately receives the money and why. FinCEN stressed that these reports are tips and leads, not proof of crime, and that MSBs should not be treated as uniformly high risk. Its red flags include payments that lack a clear business purpose or supporting documents. It also asked banks to cite the key term “FIN2026FOREIGNAGENT” in related suspicious activity reports.

Investigators follow the settlement trail between agents and principals. For the wider picture, see currency exchanges and money services businesses.

# October 28, 2026

Australian court orders Star Entertainment to pay A$260 million over casino money laundering failures

Australia’s Federal Court ordered two subsidiaries of The Star Entertainment Group to pay a combined A$260 million on October 28, 2026. The case was brought by AUSTRAC, the national financial intelligence agency. Justice Moore found the casinos broke anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing law between November 2016 and November 2022. The Star Sydney must pay A$195 million and The Star Queensland A$65 million, in four instalments over 19 months.

The judge said a significant part of the business depended on “turning a blind eye” to customers who posed a high risk of money laundering. Reporting on the judgment noted that junket operations, where promoters bring high-spending players to a casino, produced more than A$1.4 billion in revenue. The Star has accepted the penalty and says it is in line with the amount it had already set aside. It also says the payments should not threaten its ability to keep operating. The ruling shows how regulators judge a casino: not by whether crime occurred, but by whether it watched its high-risk customers. Read how casinos are used and monitored.

Related: Casinos and gambling

# October 21, 2026

Courier for Chinese money laundering network sentenced to 9 years in $92 million drug-cash case

A federal court in the Western District of North Carolina sentenced Shu Jun Zhen, 31, of New York, to nine years in prison on October 21, 2026, and ordered her to forfeit nearly $23 million. Prosecutors said she worked for a Chinese money laundering organization that moved more than $92 million in illicit funds, including proceeds from illegal drugs imported into the United States, primarily through Mexico. Zhen pleaded guilty in July 2025 to money laundering conspiracy and related counts, and admitted she knew the money came from drug sales.

According to the Justice Department, Zhen acted as a courier. She collected cash from U.S.-based traffickers and deposited it, using real and fake identities, into bank accounts of shell companies that other members of the network had registered. She personally picked up and deposited about $23 million in bulk cash. The Justice Department said she is the second defendant in this network to receive a significant sentence. The DEA and IRS Criminal Investigation led the case. The pattern investigators look for is many cash deposits into business accounts that have no real operations; see how shell companies are traced.

Related: Shell companies and nominees · Bulk cash smuggling

# October 15, 2026

New York fines Sweden's SEB $33 million over Panama Papers-era AML gaps

On October 15, 2026, the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) announced a $33 million penalty against Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB) and its New York branch, under a consent order. The inquiry began after the 2016 leak of Mossack Fonseca records, known as the Panama Papers, when DFS reviewed the ties its licensed banks had to the law firm.

DFS found weak customer due diligence and no effective strategy for high-risk clients, which exposed the New York market to added money laundering risk. It also said SEB did not properly vet high-risk correspondent banking partners, with deficient client files and miscalculated risk. Separately, transaction monitoring at SEB’s subsidiaries in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was inadequate, and backlogs let some transactions escape timely review for laundering and sanctions risks. SEB says the review covers 2015–2019 and that the US Department of Justice closed its own review without taking action.

The case shows how a bank’s foreign branches and partner banks can become a path into the US financial system. Read more about correspondent banking.

Related: Correspondent banking and wire layering · Swedbank Baltic Scandal

# October 13, 2026

Bank of America hit with $1.2 billion FinCEN penalty over Chinese money laundering networks

FinCEN assessed a $1.2 billion penalty against Bank of America on October 13, 2026, finding the bank willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program, conduct due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts, and file Suspicious Activity Reports. FinCEN said the failures let the bank miss “priority national security risks,” including Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border, and that it had outsourced much of its detection work to third parties. The same day, the OCC imposed a separate $750 million penalty, the largest in its history, after finding the bank’s transaction monitoring system failed to flag trillions of dollars in activity and routinely filed late suspicious activity reports, many with signs of laundering, even after signing a 2024 cease-and-desist order over the same problems.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control added an $11.6 million settlement, resolving 475 sanctions violations covering Iran, Russia, Belarus, Burma, narcotics, and terrorism, citing payments involving blocked banks and slow watchlist updates. Combined, the roughly $1.96 billion in penalties ranks among the largest coordinated anti-money laundering actions in Treasury’s history. Chinese money laundering networks of the kind FinCEN flagged often work as underground remittance brokers that mirror drug proceeds against trade payments rather than physically moving cash; see how that works at black-market peso exchange.

Related: Black Market Peso Exchange

# October 13, 2026

Treasury sanctions Mexican cartel's quarter horse racing and shell business network

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned four individuals and 11 entities tied to Cartel del Noreste (CDN), based across the border from Laredo, Texas, in its largest action yet against the group’s finances. The designations target Club La Molienda, a horse racetrack near Nuevo Laredo that charges entry and spectator fees to generate cartel revenue, and businessman Gamaliel Garza Garcia, who races horses there and in the US. Treasury says Garza Garcia’s construction company CEGESA won Tamaulipas government contracts it subcontracted to cartel-affiliated workers, while a materials supplier, a racing barn, and several fuel companies rounded out his network. CEGESA also funneled cash to campaigns for the cartel’s preferred candidates, officials said.

Treasury noted CDN, formerly Los Zetas, has a long history with this method: between 2008 and 2012 its founders spent $16 million buying and racing quarter horses to launder roughly $22 million in drug proceeds, a scheme that ended when agents seized 455 horses from an Oklahoma farm. A cartel plaza boss and a trucking company used to smuggle cocaine were also designated. Any US property of those sanctioned is now blocked, and Americans are barred from transacting with them. Racing horses works as a laundering vehicle because it moves large cash sums through a legitimate-looking, high-value industry; more on this kind of cash-intensive business laundering.

Related: Cash-intensive front businesses · Shell companies and nominees

# October 12, 2026

Hatton Garden front company owner jailed in UK's largest cash laundering case

Samir Jagirdar, 58, was jailed for seven years at Leeds Crown Court for laundering £266 million of criminal cash through a Bradford scrap jewellery firm, and banned from acting as a company director. Jagirdar owned Pure Nines, a gold trading company in London’s Hatton Garden district, which West Yorkshire Police’s Economic Crime Unit found was a front for delivering cash to Bradford jewellers Fowler Oldfield and for buying and exporting the gold bought with it. He had pleaded guilty before an earlier trial and was sentenced once that trial concluded.

The wider case, which police call the largest UK investigation into criminal cash, saw couriers deliver bags of banknotes to Fowler Oldfield’s premises at up to £1.7 million a day between 2012 and 2016. The company banked the cash and used it to buy high purity gold, shipped to Dubai under false invoices to disguise its origin. Jagirdar is the seventh person sentenced over the scheme, after four Fowler Oldfield figures in 2025 and two more associates in August 2026; three of the four remain at large. NatWest, which banked the account, was separately fined roughly £265 million in 2021 for failing to monitor it. The case is a model example of trade-based money laundering, where fake invoices and real goods move value across borders undetected.

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML) · Gold and precious metals

# October 11, 2026

Fugitive accused of laundering $2 billion in Venezuela bribes taken into US custody

Alvaro Pulido Vargas, a 62 year old Colombian businessman wanted by US authorities for years, was taken into custody and is set to make his first court appearance in Miami. Pulido was indicted in Miami federal court in 2019 and again in 2021 over his role as a longtime business partner of Alex Saab, a onetime ally of former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro who pleaded guilty last month in a related case. Prosecutors say Pulido and Saab built a network of offshore shell companies to funnel bribes to Venezuelan officials in exchange for more than $2 billion in government contracts to import food, medicine, and low-cost housing, inflating contract costs and routing proceeds through accounts in the US, Antigua, and the UAE to make them look legitimate. The DEA and State Department had offered a reward of up to $10 million for his arrest.

Pulido had already been arrested once in Venezuela in 2023, in a domestic corruption crackdown inside state oil company PDVSA. How he ended up in US custody this time has not been disclosed. The case illustrates a pattern common to large-scale government corruption: officials and their business partners use shell companies with no real operations to disguise bribe payments as ordinary trade revenue. More on how shell companies launder proceeds this way.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# October 8, 2026

American Express fined $350 million after missing a decade of suspicious trade activity

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fined American Express National Bank $350 million on October 8, 2026, and ordered it to fix its anti-money laundering program, after finding years of failures in how the bank watched for suspicious activity. The OCC said the bank built its risk assessment around its relatively small checking-account business while giving far less attention to its much larger credit and charge card operations, where the real exposure sat. That mismatch, combined with understaffing, weak internal controls, and thin staff training, meant the bank did not timely identify, evaluate, or report roughly $13 billion in suspected trade-based money laundering activity over the past decade.

The Federal Reserve separately issued a cease-and-desist order the same day against American Express Company and its travel-related services subsidiary, citing the same program weaknesses. The OCC’s penalty goes to the U.S. Treasury. Neither order required proof that the $13 billion in flagged transactions was actually laundered money; the violation was the bank’s failure to detect, investigate, and report it in the first place, the core obligation every U.S. bank carries under the Bank Secrecy Act. The case shows why trade finance, with its invoices, shipping records, and cross-border payments, stays one of the hardest channels for banks to monitor; read more at trade-based money laundering.

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML)

# October 8, 2026

Wisconsin courier sentenced to 7 years for laundering $1 million in 'Phantom Hacker' elder fraud

A federal judge in Wisconsin sentenced Ankurkumar Patel, 44, of Brookfield, to 84 months in prison on October 6, 2026, after he pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy for his role in “Phantom Hacker Scam” fraud. In this scheme, a caller posing as tech support or a bank representative tells an elderly victim their account has been hacked, then hands them off to a fake law enforcement or government official who instructs them to move their savings, often as physical cash or gold, into “safekeeping.” Patel’s job was to act as the courier: he personally retrieved more than $1 million from victims in several states and distributed it through anonymous transactions to co-conspirators, much of it ending up overseas.

Judge Brett H. Ludwig ordered Patel to pay over $1.3 million in restitution, noting that victims lost retirement savings they had spent a lifetime building. The case was investigated by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. Unlike wire-based laundering, this scheme relied on in-person pickup of cash and gold, a method that avoids bank reporting thresholds but still gets caught once investigators trace the courier network back to victims; see how that physical movement of cash gets flagged at bulk cash smuggling.

Related: Funnel accounts and money mules · Bulk cash smuggling

# October 8, 2026

Ukrainian-Russian national pleads guilty to running 15,000-mule laundering network for hackers

Oleg Korniev, 42, a dual citizen of Ukraine and Russia, pleaded guilty on October 8, 2026 to running Your Mule Cashout (YMCO), a money laundering organization built to cash out stolen funds for computer hackers. According to court documents, YMCO recruited more than 15,000 U.S.-based money mules who believed they were doing legitimate remote jobs: receiving payments into their personal bank accounts, withdrawing the cash, and wiring it to “business partners” overseas. In reality the money came from hackers who had broken into the bank accounts of U.S. companies, and the mules were never paid for their trouble. In total, prosecutors said the scheme laundered at least $10 million stolen from more than 750 U.S. bank accounts, with YMCO responsible for over $14.7 million in actual and intended losses.

Korniev helped set YMCO’s policies, hired and fired staff, and arranged the infrastructure that moved stolen funds mainly into Eastern Europe in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, conspiracy to commit access device theft, and aggravated identity theft, and agreed to pay restitution to known victims and forfeit cash seized when he was arrested in Georgia. He faces between two and fifty years in prison; sentencing has not yet been scheduled. Four other YMCO members previously extradited to the United States received sentences of roughly three to five years. The case shows why unwitting money mules, not just hackers, remain a prime target for investigators; read more about how that recruitment works at money mules.

Related: Funnel accounts and money mules

# October 7, 2026

Crypto hacker convicted of laundering $53 million through Tornado Cash

A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Jonathan Spalletta on October 7, 2026, of computer fraud and money laundering after a six day trial. Prosecutors said he exploited a flaw in the smart contract behind Uranium Finance, a decentralized crypto exchange, draining about $1.4 million in an April 8, 2021 attack and then $53.3 million twenty days later, a loss big enough to shut the platform down. He later told an associate in writing that he had found “a bug in a smart contract” and exploited it, calling crypto “fake internet money.”

After the second hack, Spalletta moved the stolen funds through a series of cryptocurrency transactions, including the mixer Tornado Cash, before spending it on collectibles: a $500,000 Magic: The Gathering “Black Lotus” card, rare Pokemon card sets, antique Roman coins, and a fragment of fabric from the Wright brothers’ plane that flew to the moon with Neil Armstrong. Investigators seized about $31 million in crypto from him in February 2025. He faces up to 10 years for the fraud count and 20 for laundering. The case shows how mixers remain central to cashing out stolen crypto; see how they work at crypto mixers.

Related: Mixers, tumblers, and CoinJoin

# October 6, 2026

Former TD Bank employee pleads guilty to taking bribes, laundering $4.8 million to Colombia

Gerardo Aquino, 40, of Hollywood, Florida, pleaded guilty on October 6, 2026 to conspiring to launder money and accepting bribes while working as a TD Bank employee. Prosecutors said that from April 2022 to November 2023, Aquino opened fraudulent accounts, issued hundreds of debit cards to co-conspirators, and unblocked cards the bank had restricted for suspected fraud. Those accounts and cards were then used to funnel approximately $4.8 million out of the United States, including more than $3 million moved through 86 individual customer accounts Aquino opened using the same commercial address in Miami. In exchange, he received more than $8,000 in bribes, paid in cash and through a peer-to-peer payment app.

Aquino faces up to 20 years in prison for the money laundering conspiracy charge and up to 30 years for receipt of bribes by a bank employee, with sentencing set for March 23, 2027. The case is part of the same pattern of insider-enabled ATM withdrawals to Colombia that featured in TD Bank’s 2024 guilty plea to Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering violations, when the bank paid about $3.09 billion in penalties after regulators found 92 percent of its transaction volume went unmonitored for years. Complicit bank employees remain one of the easiest ways around account controls; read more at TD Bank.

Related: Funnel accounts and money mules · Structuring (smurfing) · TD Bank

# October 5, 2026

Dominican prosecutors charge 13 people and five companies with laundering grandparent-scam proceeds

The Dominican Republic’s Ministerio Público filed a formal accusation on October 5, 2026 against 13 people and five companies, asking a Santiago court to send them to trial for running the money laundering side of “Operación Discovery 3.0,” a grandparent scam network that tricked elderly Americans into handing over cash. Prosecutors say the accused used shell companies, bank accounts, cryptocurrency and wire transfers to move scam proceeds into the Dominican Republic, then invested the money in real estate, vehicles and other assets to make it look legitimate. Investigators traced transactions of more than 120 million Dominican pesos moving through the network in under a year, far more than the defendants’ declared legal income could explain.

The case is the domestic half of a scheme whose ringleaders, including Oscar Manuel Castanos Garcia, are already facing trial in Boston after being extradited to the United States. US prosecutors say the wider operation stole more than $5 million from over 400 elderly victims nationwide, using callers who posed as a grandchild in trouble and “runners” who collected cash from victims’ homes. Companies created solely to receive and move stolen money, then folded or swapped out, are a hallmark of layering. Learn how investigators unwind that structure at shell companies.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# October 5, 2026

FinCEN withdraws its proposed crypto mixer and unhosted wallet reporting rules

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced on October 5, 2026 that it is withdrawing two proposed rules aimed at crypto. The first, proposed in October 2023, would have formally found that international crypto mixing is a class of transactions of primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and would have added record keeping and reporting duties on US financial institutions for mixer linked transactions. The second, proposed in 2020, would have required banks and money service businesses to verify customer identity and file reports on larger transactions involving unhosted, self custodied crypto wallets. FinCEN said it reviewed public comments and is withdrawing both “as part of the Trump Administration’s deregulatory agenda and ongoing efforts to ensure digital asset regulations are fit for purpose.”

Neither proposal had been finalized, so withdrawing them changes no rule currently in force. Crypto exchanges and other covered businesses still have to follow existing Bank Secrecy Act duties, including filing suspicious activity reports when they see mixer use or other red flags. The move does mark a shift in US posture toward anonymity enhancing crypto tools after years of enforcement actions against mixers like Tornado Cash, Samourai Wallet, and ChipMixer. For more on how these services work and where investigators still see through them, see crypto mixers.

Related: Mixers, tumblers, and CoinJoin

# October 2, 2026

FBI's first cyber fugitive, accused Tren de Aragua ATM jackpotting leader, appears in US court

Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, 50, known as “Prometheus” and “The Engineer,” made his initial appearance in federal court in Nebraska on October 2, 2026, after being captured in Venezuela. The Justice Department says he is a leader of a Tren de Aragua scheme that used malware called Ploutus to force ATMs to dispense cash without debiting any account, a technique known as jackpotting, in attacks across 47 states, Washington D.C., and several foreign countries. He was the first cybercrime suspect ever added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, in March 2026.

Canelon Aguirre faces conspiracy charges for bank fraud, bank burglary and computer fraud, money laundering, and providing material support to a terrorist organization, since Tren de Aragua is designated a foreign terrorist organization. Prosecutors say the stolen cash was moved through cryptocurrency to disguise its origin before reaching the group, the same laundering network the Treasury Department sanctioned on September 30, 2026. A total of 120 defendants have now been charged in the Nebraska case. See how investigators trace crypto-laundered proceeds like these at blockchain analytics.

# October 2, 2026

Spanish police dismantle cocaine network that laundered profits through luxury villas

Spain’s National Police and Guardia Civil, working with Europol, announced on October 2, 2026 that they had dismantled a cocaine trafficking network that doubled as a money laundering service for other criminal groups. The operation, which police say began with an encrypted messaging investigation in September 2023, led to 27 arrests: 26 in Spain and one in the Dominican Republic, where Spanish and Dominican officers tracked down an alleged leader hiding in a luxury villa in Punta Cana. Investigators also linked the network to four cocaine seizures in Panama totaling more than 1,500 kilograms.

Police say the group moved cocaine from Colombia and Panama into Europe inside shipping containers, then used real estate development companies to launder the proceeds, investing in entire housing projects and luxury villas in Ibiza, Marbella and Madrid to hide who really owned the properties. The network expanded into what investigators called “crime as a service,” charging other trafficking groups commissions to launder their money the same way. Officers froze 95 properties, more than 1.3 million USDT in cryptocurrency and 26 bank accounts, and shut down over 100 companies used to disguise the money’s origin. Real estate remains one of the most common ways to turn drug cash into clean assets. See how investigators spot it at real estate.

Related: Real estate

# October 2, 2026

US and France dismantle Hamas charity fundraising network accused of laundering $1.7 million

The Justice Department announced on October 2, 2026, the unsealing of an indictment against Saleem Alzaq, 45, a Hamas media official in Gaza, along with the arrests of Omar Adhami and Abdel Adhami of Covington, Louisiana, and Raed Yousef of Lutz, Florida. French authorities simultaneously arrested three of Alzaq’s associates in a coordinated operation. Prosecutors say that since at least January 2020, Alzaq ran social media fundraising campaigns that told donors, including people in the United States, their money would provide humanitarian aid in Gaza, while he instead funneled more than $1.7 million of it to Hamas.

According to the charges, the Louisiana brothers contributed roughly $94,000 and $11,000 respectively and tried to conceal their donations using wire transfers and intermediaries, while Yousef sent almost $50,000 to the network. All three US-based defendants face conspiracy to commit money laundering charges carrying up to 20 years in prison, on top of material support and wire fraud counts. Breaking a direct donor-to-recipient link by routing money through multiple people and accounts before it reaches its true destination is a layering move, used here to disguise terrorist financing as charity. See how that concealment works at Layering.

# October 2, 2026

UK crime group jailed for smuggling almost £30 million in cash to Dubai

Members of a crime group that smuggled almost £30 million out of the UK to the United Arab Emirates were sentenced at Bolton Crown Court on October 2, 2026, following a National Crime Agency investigation. Couriers packed hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time into suitcases and flew them to Dubai on Emirates flights from Manchester, Birmingham, and Brussels between December 2017 and November 2019, sometimes helped by a corrupt Emirates check in attendant at Manchester Airport. A British, Dubai based organiser who is awaiting extradition allegedly directed the network by WhatsApp to collect cash from organised crime groups around Manchester, Liverpool, Southport, Sheffield, and Huddersfield.

Sophie Logan, who flew to Dubai 38 times and declared £3.9 million in cash on arrival there, was jailed for seven and a half years. Heather Jeffrey, who moved £5 million over 10 trips with her children, got six and a half years, and the children six and five years respectively. Devanyl Graham, who declared £4 million over 18 trips, got six years, and an accomplice got four years three months. The scheme unraveled after customs officers seized £788,455 in cash at UK airports on three separate occasions, triggering the NCA probe. Carrying cash physically past border checks instead of moving it through banks is the core move behind bulk cash smuggling.

Related: Bulk cash smuggling

# October 1, 2026

Treasury sanctions Russia-linked A7 Network as sanctions evasion hub for Iran

On October 1, 2026, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated the A7 Network, a Russia-linked shadow banking operation led by sanctioned fraudster Ilan Shor, as a significant transnational criminal organization. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network separately proposed a rule barring U.S. financial institutions from handling transfers tied to the network’s “Sub-Agents,” a web of foreign front companies that disguise sanctioned payments as ordinary trade. FinCEN said those Sub-Agents processed more than $17 billion between January 2025 and June 2026, and the network itself has claimed a daily volume equivalent to roughly 13 percent of Russia’s 2025 foreign trade.

Treasury said the Sub-Agents also moved funds for Iran’s central bank, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iran-backed groups including Hamas, and linked the network to the A7A5 ruble-backed token issued by Old Vector, a firm Treasury had already sanctioned in August 2025 alongside the crypto exchange Grinex. The action follows an August 2026 alert from the UK’s National Crime Agency on the same network. Learn how unlicensed exchanges and front companies like these move illicit funds at Unlicensed exchanges and nested services.

Related: Unlicensed exchanges and nested services · Sanctions evasion

# October 1, 2026

California tech executive charged with laundering $300 million GPU smuggling scheme

Federal prosecutors unsealed a three-count indictment on October 1, 2026, against Greg Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, California, owner of Earthmade Computer Inc. Prosecutors allege that from 2023 to 2024, Lui and co-conspirators bought high-end servers containing US-made GPUs and shipped them to Malaysia and Singapore, where no export license was required, then illegally re-exported them to buyers in China. Earthmade allegedly received more than $176 million from two Malaysia-based shipping companies between January and October 2024. Lui is charged with conspiracy to violate export control laws, outbound smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, and faces up to 20 years in prison on the laundering count alone.

According to the indictment, Lui gave US manufacturers false paperwork claiming the servers were headed to permissible end users, then used freight forwarders to route shipments through third countries before transshipping them onward to China. Prosecutors say email records show a co-conspirator told a Malaysian official that a batch of 27 servers had in fact been sent to a China-based buyer after transiting Kuala Lumpur. Routing goods through intermediary countries with falsified paperwork to disguise their true destination is a textbook move in trade-based laundering, which hides illicit value inside ordinary trade documents rather than bank transfers. See how that works at Trade based money laundering (TBML).

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML)

# October 1, 2026

Subway vendor cooperative's ex-CEO charged in $80 million bribery and laundering scheme

A federal grand jury in Miami indicted Janet Risi Field, 66, and her brother Steven Risi, 70, on October 1, 2026, over an alleged decades-long bribery and money laundering scheme tied to Independent Purchasing Cooperative (IPC), the Miami-Dade nonprofit that negotiates supply contracts for thousands of Subway franchisees across North America. Risi Field helped found IPC in 1996 and ran it as CEO until 2021, a position prosecutors say gave her authority over vendor contracts affecting prices paid by franchise owners nationwide.

Prosecutors allege vendors supplying items such as deli meats, cheeses and cookies paid brokers who then kicked back a share of their fees to Risi Field and her family, causing more than $80 million in harm to franchisees. The indictment says the siblings and other relatives used shell companies and bank accounts they controlled to conceal more than $60 million of the proceeds, which funded home renovations, jewelry and private club memberships. Both face conspiracy to commit money laundering charges carrying up to 20 years in prison. Shell companies with no real business purpose are a classic way to break the paper trail between a bribe and its spender; see how it works at Shell companies and nominees.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# September 30, 2026

Treasury sanctions Tren de Aragua network behind US ATM jackpotting scheme

The Treasury Department sanctioned 10 people connected to Tren de Aragua on September 30, 2026, over a scheme that used malware to force US ATMs to dispense cash without debiting any account, a technique known as jackpotting. Treasury said the operation is run by Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, an FBI top-ten fugitive known as “Prometheus,” who is accused of engineering the malware from Mexico and Venezuela. As of August 2025, reported losses from the scheme topped $40.73 million across more than 1,500 attacks on US financial institutions, and the Justice Department has indicted 98 people over the jackpotting rings since October 2025.

Once the cash was out of the machines, Treasury said the network moved it through cryptocurrency transactions to disguise its criminal origin before it reached Tren de Aragua members in other countries. The designations freeze any US assets the network holds and bar Americans from dealing with them, part of a wider crackdown that has hit more than 300 people and entities linked to Tren de Aragua and other cartels since 2025. For more on how investigators trace stolen funds once they move onto the blockchain, see blockchain analytics.

# September 30, 2026

India's ED arrests Vatika Group chairman over diverted plot payments

India’s Enforcement Directorate said this week it arrested Vatika Group chairman and managing director Anil Bhalla and promoter Gautam Bhalla under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, remanding them to custody until October 3. The case follows police complaints alleging Vatika failed to deliver residential plots in two Gurugram projects more than a decade after buyers paid in full.

According to the ED, seven purchaser entities paid about 260 crore rupees upfront between 2010 and 2012. In one project, not a single plot covering roughly 1.10 lakh square yards, worth about 90 crore rupees, has been delivered after nearly 14 years, and plots worth a further 140 crore rupees in the other project also remain undelivered. The agency said money collected from buyers was transferred to other group companies and promoter-linked entities with no connection to the projects it was raised for. The land itself was held through roughly 22 group companies with no staff of their own, used mainly to provide guarantees and manage the land bank. The ED put the proceeds of crime at about 154 crore rupees, or roughly $16 million.

Routing customer payments through a web of related companies with no real operations of their own is a classic layering move. See how it works at Shell companies and nominees.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# September 29, 2026

Treasury sanctions Sinaloa Cartel leaders and a Baja California corruption network

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 21 people and 25 companies on September 29, 2026, targeting the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel’s Los Mayos faction and the network that lets it control drug routes through Tijuana and Mexicali. The list includes cartel leader Ismael Zambada Sicairos, known as “Mayito Flaco,” and reaches into Baja California’s state government: Treasury named Carlos Alberto Torres Torres, the ex-husband of Baja California’s governor, accusing him of taking bribes to protect cartel operations, with his brother laundering the payments through companies and political campaigns.

The action also targeted the laundering machinery itself. Treasury said a Tijuana currency exchange called Magic Casa de Cambio worked with money exchanges in Southern California to collect bulk cash drug proceeds, run mirror transactions on both sides of the border, and send the value back to Mexico without physically moving the cash. A second exchange in Mexicali, run by a sanctioned cartel money launderer, is accused of the same role. Sanctioned individuals and businesses have their U.S. assets frozen, and Americans are barred from dealing with them. For more on how currency exchanges and money services businesses get used this way, see currency exchanges and MSBs.

Related: Currency exchanges and MSBs

# September 28, 2026

Casino cash-outs land Las Vegas fraud ringleader nearly 8 years

Gilberto Barron, 26, was sentenced on September 28, 2026, to seven years and ten months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and aggravated identity theft, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California announced. Barron and co-conspirators, including federal inmate Seth Depiano, created fake real estate agents and shell companies mirroring legitimate firms, then marketed properties that were not actually for sale, in some cases where the real owner had died. Buyers in California’s Central Valley and elsewhere paid after being shown fabricated deeds and title reports.

To hide where the money came from, the group laundered it mainly through Las Vegas casinos: they fed large amounts of cash into gaming machines, played little or not at all, and cashed out with a paper trail that made the money look like gambling proceeds, then used the funds to buy property for themselves. Depiano, already serving 12 years for an earlier fraud, received nine more years, for a total of 21. Co-conspirator Zahria Barber, who helped launder money at the casinos in exchange for help with living expenses, was sentenced to one year.

Buying chips with dirty cash and cashing out after little or no play is a classic placement technique. Read how it works at Casinos and gambling.

Related: Casinos and gambling

# September 25, 2026

Travel agency front used to launder $20 million in Cuban smuggling scheme

A federal jury in the Middle District of Florida convicted Lazaro Alain Cabrera-Rodriguez, 28, of Hialeah, on September 25, 2026, of conspiracy to commit alien smuggling for financial gain, conspiracy to commit international money laundering, and conspiracy to commit money laundering concealment. Prosecutors said Cabrera-Rodriguez used his travel agency as a front for an alien smuggling organization that charged Cuban nationals between $1,500 and $40,000 each to enter the United States illegally, including by filing at least 600 fraudulent visa waiver applications that falsely claimed the applicants had not been in Cuba since 2011.

Financial records showed more than $20 million moved through 57 bank accounts controlled by Cabrera-Rodriguez and his co-conspirators, including over $600,000 transmitted to companies outside the United States between 2021 and 2024 to buy flights for the smuggled migrants. Spreading the proceeds across dozens of accounts, rather than concentrating them in one, made the money harder for banks and investigators to trace back to a single source. Seven co-conspirators have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing, and an eighth was sentenced in July to 30 months in prison. Cabrera-Rodriguez faces up to 20 years in prison at sentencing on December 17, 2026. How criminals spread illicit funds across networks of bank accounts to break the paper trail is covered on the funnel accounts and money mules page.

Related: Funnel accounts and money mules

# September 25, 2026

Vietnamese national charged with laundering $53 million from pig butchering scams

Trung Nguyen Van, 37, was charged with money laundering in a Western District of Missouri criminal complaint unsealed after his initial court appearance in Los Angeles, prosecutors announced September 25, 2026. The case grew out of a single victim’s loss: between June and August 2024, that victim transferred about $16 million in cryptocurrency, believing they were investing in a platform called “Triangle.”

Investigators traced roughly $569,000 of those funds into a wallet controlled by Van, then, according to the complaint, watched him move about $568,000 of it out again in four transactions to a private, unhosted wallet off the centralized blockchain network. Zooming out, prosecutors say Van’s wallets received about $53.3 million between February 2018 and December 2024, tied to wire fraud “pig butchering” schemes against US victims, most of it funneled onward the same way. Pig butchering scams typically start with a fake romantic or friendly relationship online before the scammer steers the victim toward a bogus investment platform. Tracing crypto through wallet clustering despite this kind of rapid movement is covered on the blockchain analytics page.

# September 24, 2026

Bitget hacked for $351 million; Circle and Tether freeze part of the haul

Bitget, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, disclosed on September 24, 2026 that attackers had drained about $351.6 million from its hot and warm wallets across seven blockchains, including Ethereum, XRP Ledger and Arbitrum. Chief executive Gracy Chen said the exchange’s cold wallets were untouched and that a $464 million user protection fund would cover customer losses. She said IP patterns and on-chain analysis pointed to a North Korean hacking group, echoing tactics used in the record $1.5 billion Bybit theft in 2025.

The theft shows why stolen crypto rarely sits still. Most of the haul moved into ether and other tokens that no company can freeze, but a small slice landed in USDT and USDC. On September 25, stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether blacklisted the wallet holding it, locking up about $318,000, a fraction of the total. The rest is being tracked across chains as investigators try to catch it before it reaches a broker willing to convert it to cash. For more on how stolen crypto moves through stablecoins and OTC brokers on its way to cash, see stablecoins and OTC brokers.

Related: Stablecoins and OTC brokers · Chain hopping and cross-chain bridges · Lazarus Group

# September 24, 2026

Connecticut housing authority director indicted over $16.2 million loan fraud

A federal grand jury in New Haven indicted Robert Cappelletti, 60, on September 22, 2026, on five counts of wire fraud and four counts of making illegal monetary transactions. Cappelletti spent roughly two decades as executive director of the Meriden Housing Authority and, from 2016, the Groton Housing Authority, both of which manage public housing for low-income families. Prosecutors allege that in 2022 he fraudulently borrowed $16.2 million on behalf of a nonprofit tied to the Meriden authority, backing the loan with forged board resolutions the authority’s directors never approved.

After the lender wired nearly $14 million, Cappelletti allegedly funneled part of it into his own accounts: about $450,000 into a personal investment account and roughly $375,000 toward his home mortgage. He is also accused of directing the Groton authority to make loan payments it was never obligated to cover, backing those transfers with forged invoices that misrepresented the payments as tied to a future bond deal. He pleaded not guilty and was released on a $500,000 bond. Wire fraud carries up to 20 years in prison per count; the money laundering counts carry up to 10 years each. The case illustrates how nonprofit and corporate entities tied to legitimate institutions can be used as paper cover to move stolen money, a pattern explored in shell companies.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# September 24, 2026

Four Massachusetts men indicted over $12.2 million Treasury check fraud

A federal grand jury in Boston indicted David Obeng, Lynley Joseph, Lindsley Georges, and Shaunsayh Addo on one count each of bank fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, prosecutors announced September 24, 2026. All four were arrested the same morning.

Prosecutors allege the men coordinated the theft and deposit of stolen US Treasury checks totaling at least $12.2 million between 2023 and 2026. Each check had been issued to a legitimate payee but was altered to be payable to shell companies the defendants controlled. After depositing the checks at banks and credit unions around Boston, the group allegedly moved the money through cashier’s checks to obscure its origin, then spent about $310,000 on luxury watches and used part of the proceeds to secure a $425,000 real estate loan backed by property on Nantucket. A second indictment separately charges Obeng with wire fraud, additional bank fraud counts, and aggravated identity theft tied to unauthorized access of victims’ bank and retirement accounts. Money laundering conspiracy carries up to 20 years in prison. Using paper companies to receive and launder stolen checks is covered on the shell companies page.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# September 23, 2026

Brooklyn man sentenced to 4 to 12 years for laundering $16m Coinbase phishing scheme

Ronald Spektor, 23, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, was sentenced on September 23, 2026, to four to twelve years in prison by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun. Spektor had pleaded guilty to a full 31-count indictment, including first-degree money laundering, first-degree grand larceny, and first-degree criminal possession of stolen property.

Prosecutors say Spektor impersonated Coinbase customer support and contacted roughly 100 US-based users, warning them their accounts were at risk of being hacked and persuading them to move their crypto into a “safe wallet” he controlled. He then emptied those wallets, together worth nearly $16 million, and laundered the proceeds by routing them through crypto exchanges, online gambling services, and online retailers, a mix of channels chosen so no single platform’s monitoring would see the whole trail. Brooklyn prosecutors had sought seven to twenty-one years; the judge imposed the shorter term. Spektor was ordered to forfeit more than $500,000 in cash, cryptocurrency, and property, and to pay nearly $16 million in restitution. The case was built by the Brooklyn DA’s Virtual Currency Unit, which traced the wallet-to-wallet movement of funds. Using gambling balances and gift cards to break up and clean stolen funds is covered on the gaming currencies and gambling balances page.

Related: Gaming currencies and skins

# September 23, 2026

UK banks closed 238,000 suspected money mule accounts in 2025, FCA finds

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority published a multi-firm review on September 23, 2026, finding that 35 surveyed banks, building societies and payment firms closed 238,396 suspected money mule accounts in 2025, up from 233,269 in 2024 and 184,935 in 2023, though growth slowed in the most recent year. The National Crime Agency estimates more than 100 billion pounds is laundered through the UK or UK corporate structures every year, and money muling, using other people’s bank accounts to receive and move criminal funds, is one of the main ways that money gets shifted.

The review found fraud proceeds are usually cashed out after passing through two to five mule accounts, by which point payments become harder to trace. Card payments were the most common cash-out method, often broken into small transactions or payments to retailers that resemble ordinary spending. Closures were highest among customers aged 26 to 39, while the sharpest increase was among those aged 40 to 49. Some closed accounts had been used repeatedly for both mule activity and fraud, pointing to organized infrastructure rather than one-off recruitment. The FCA is now working with industry and the National Crime Agency on sharing intelligence about suspected mule activity. More on how funnel accounts and recruited mules move criminal money is on the money mules and funnel accounts page.

Related: Funnel accounts and money mules

# September 22, 2026

Europol-backed operation breaks migrant smuggling network laundering profits through phone shops

Law enforcement in Austria, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom carried out coordinated raids on September 22, 2026, arresting six people and searching ten properties as part of an investigation spanning 17 countries. Europol said the network smuggled migrants from mainland Europe into the UK by air, relying on genuine Schengen visas to get people into the EU, then swapping their real passports for counterfeit documents supplied by the group. Investigators seized ID documents, electronics and a large amount of cash.

One cell based in Vienna, allegedly involving Afghan and Pakistani nationals, supplied the fake documents and set up a network of businesses, primarily mobile phone shops, to launder the operation’s criminal proceeds. A separate cell in Spain is accused of distributing more than 1,000 counterfeit IDs couriered from the United Arab Emirates to buyers across the EU, the Americas and the Caribbean. Europol estimates the wider network generated more than 2 million euros in illegal proceeds. Routing illicit cash through small retail businesses that handle large volumes of cash is a long-running laundering method, covered in cash-intensive businesses.

Related: Cash-intensive front businesses

# September 21, 2026

DOJ investigating Binance over alleged Iran sanctions violations

The US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington are investigating whether Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, violated US sanctions on Iran by failing to stop trading it knew was connected to Iranian users, Bloomberg reported on September 21, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter. The DOJ declined to comment and prosecutors could not be reached outside business hours. Binance said it “fully cooperate[s] with law enforcement” and maintains “a zero-tolerance approach to sanctions violations.”

The probe follows a civil forfeiture complaint the same Manhattan office filed on September 14, 2026, which alleged that two Chinese companies used Binance trading accounts to convert more than $1.5 billion in proceeds from sanctioned Iranian oil sales into cryptocurrency and route it toward the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Binance was not named as a defendant in that filing and has said it does not permit transactions with sanctioned individuals. The exchange already pleaded guilty in 2023 to Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions-related violations and paid $4.3 billion to resolve that case; a new finding of knowing sanctions violations would test how regulators treat a repeat offender. How exchanges become the choke point investigators target is explained on sanctions evasion.

Related: Sanctions evasion · Binance

# September 21, 2026

Extradited Nigerian pleads guilty to laundering $2.5m from sextortion and romance scams

Olamide Shanu, 35, pleaded guilty on September 21, 2026, in the District of Idaho to conspiracy to commit money laundering, after being extradited from Nigeria to face charges tied to an international sextortion and romance fraud ring. Prosecutors say Shanu and his co-conspirators defrauded roughly 150 victims across the United States and made more than $2.5 million.

In the sextortion scheme, the group targeted men, persuaded them to send explicit images, then threatened to share the images with the victims’ friends and family unless they paid. In the romance scams, the conspirators built fake social media identities, cultivated deceptive relationships with victims (often older women and men), and then asked for money to cover invented emergencies. Court documents say the proceeds were laundered through peer-to-peer payment apps and several cryptocurrency wallet addresses before reaching co-conspirators in Nigeria, a layering step that moved the money offshore quickly and outside the reach of a single bank’s monitoring. Shanu faces up to 20 years in prison at sentencing on December 15, 2026. The case was brought under the Justice Department’s Cyber-Enabled Scam Initiative. How criminals use peer-to-peer transfers to move stolen funds is covered on the crypto ATMs and peer-to-peer trades page.

Related: Crypto ATMs and peer-to-peer trades

# September 17, 2026

DOJ returns $29.7m to Curacao after unlicensed lottery fraud and laundering scheme

The Justice Department announced on September 17, 2026, that it is transferring approximately $29.7 million back to the government of Curacao in three installments. The money is what remains of an eight-year scheme run by Robertico A. Dos Santos, who operated an unlicensed lottery and failed to pay taxes on the proceeds. Dos Santos deposited the illicit income into investment accounts at a Miami bank, opening those accounts in the names of companies he controlled rather than his own, a layering step that separated the money from its criminal source and made it harder to trace back to him.

The recovery followed a pretrial restraining order and a final forfeiture order issued by a Curacao court, which the department’s Money Laundering, Narcotics, and Forfeiture Section enforced through a U.S. district court in Washington, D.C. Officials said the funds will be returned to Curacao under a regime of regular audits, with no disbursements allowed to Dos Santos or his family. The case illustrates a basic laundering technique: routing proceeds through company-held bank accounts to obscure the true owner, and how cross-border asset forfeiture cooperation can unwind it years later. More on how shell companies are used to hide ownership of illicit funds.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# September 17, 2026

US sanctions Iranian crypto exchange BitBank over bitcoin flows to the IRGC

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated BitBank, an Iranian digital asset exchange, on September 17, 2026. Treasury said Babak Zanjani, an Iranian financier who was already sanctioned, used BitBank between June and July 2026 to move “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin” to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It also said Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority, an entity sanctioned earlier, has used BitBank since June to transfer payments it received to the Iranian regime.

Treasury also designated BitBank’s software developer, Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Company, and three Zanjani associates: Hossein Ali Zaker Hossein, Mohammad Mahdi Zaker Hossein and Seyed Adel Heidari. The action used Executive Order 13902, which covers Iran’s digital asset sector, and is part of Operation Economic Outcast. Once an exchange is designated, US property tied to it is blocked, and foreign firms that keep dealing with it risk sanctions of their own. Investigators treat exchanges like this as choke points, because coins must eventually be converted or cashed out somewhere. See how detection works for the signals that lead to actions like this.

# September 15, 2026

Maduro ally Alex Saab pleads guilty to laundering bribery proceeds, forfeits $195m

Alex Saab, a former Venezuelan industry minister and close financial ally of former president Nicolas Maduro, pleaded guilty on September 15, 2026, in Miami federal court to conspiring to launder monetary instruments. Prosecutors said Saab ran a near decade-long scheme built around CLAP, a Venezuelan government program meant to supply food and medicine to the poor. Companies secretly controlled by Saab and his associates won CLAP import contracts after paying bribes to officials, then billed for goods they never fully delivered. To move and hide the proceeds, Saab set up shell companies outside Venezuela and routed money into the United States and elsewhere, using fake invoices and false shipping records to make the payments look legitimate.

As part of the plea, Saab agreed to forfeit $195 million and cooperate with prosecutors, including in the ongoing federal case against Maduro. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years, though prosecutors agreed to recommend the low end of the guideline range. Saab was pardoned by President Biden in 2023 as part of a prisoner swap, then indicted again in January 2026 for conduct the pardon did not cover. The case shows how shell companies with no real operations, paired with falsified trade paperwork, can turn bribery money into ordinary-looking import business revenue. More on how shell companies launder proceeds this way.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# September 15, 2026

Mozambican network leader gets 11 years for laundering $500m in drug proceeds

Norolamin Gulam, a Mozambican national living in Portugal, was sentenced on September 15, 2026, to 135 months (more than 11 years) in federal prison by a judge in the Eastern District of Texas. He also has to pay a $7.5 million money judgment. Gulam pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering after prosecutors identified him as the leader of a transnational laundering organization active since 2021, with reach across Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Central and South America.

Investigators said Gulam laundered a minimum of $500 million in drug trafficking proceeds by running the money through multiple businesses and real estate ventures, a common way to turn illicit cash into assets that look like ordinary commercial income. The case was investigated under the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, which pooled resources from the FBI, ICE Homeland Security Investigations, the DEA, ATF, IRS Criminal Investigation, and other federal agencies. Cases at this scale usually break open when banks or title companies flag unusual property purchases or business transactions that do not match a buyer’s known income, prompting the suspicious activity reports that give investigators a paper trail to follow. More on how real estate gets used to clean large sums.

Related: Real estate

# September 15, 2026

UK unveils 500 million pound plan and 500 new officers to chase dirty money

The UK Home Office and HM Treasury unveiled a new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy on September 15, 2026, backed by 500 million pounds over three years from the Economic Crime Levy charged on regulated firms. The money funds 500 new officers spread across police forces, the National Crime Agency, and the Crown Prosecution Service, working alongside the Financial Conduct Authority and Serious Fraud Office to trace and seize criminal money, including proceeds moved through Russian-linked laundering networks.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the goal was to “break their grip on our communities” by going after the profits behind organised crime gangs. Treasury officials pointed to results from the past year as the model to scale up: authorities stripped nearly 350 million pounds from criminals, disrupted around 2,700 illicit finance operations, and secured almost 4,000 money laundering convictions, while a related crackdown called Operation Destabilise seized 25 million pounds in cash and crypto from networks that turn street cash into digital assets for organized crime. The government estimates around 100 billion pounds is laundered through the UK every year. How suspicious activity reports and asset seizure actually work is covered in how detection works.

# September 14, 2026

DOJ seeks $61 million tied to $1.5 billion Iran oil crypto-laundering network

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed a civil forfeiture complaint on September 14, 2026, against approximately $61 million in cryptocurrency they allege are proceeds of black-market sales of sanctioned Iranian crude oil and petroleum products. The complaint names two Chinese companies, Blessed Trust and Hexa Whale, which prosecutors say posed as a wealth-management firm and a commodities broker but actually used trading accounts at the exchange Binance to convert oil-sale proceeds into cryptocurrency and move them toward the Iranian government and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Prosecutors say a linked cluster of unhosted crypto addresses, which they call “Entity A,” received and distributed more than $1.5 billion in illicit oil proceeds, funneling money to IRGC-linked money services businesses and an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange through transactions designed to obscure who controlled the funds. Binance itself is not named as a defendant; a company spokesperson said it does not permit transactions with sanctioned individuals. As a civil forfeiture action, the complaint’s allegations must still be proven in court before the government can keep the funds. The layered use of shifting crypto addresses and offshore exchange accounts to hide a money trail is explained on chain-hopping and cross-chain bridges.

Related: Chain hopping and cross-chain bridges

# September 14, 2026

US sanctions Russia's VTB Bank over Iran shadow-banking ties

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated VTB Bank, one of Russia’s largest financial institutions, on September 14, 2026, for helping Iran evade sanctions. Treasury said VTB opened bank offices in Iran and built correspondent banking relationships with sanctioned Iranian financial institutions, then set up a settlement system using correspondent accounts in Iranian rials and Russian rubles designed to move billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and expand trade between the two countries.

The designation came under Executive Order 13902, which targets Iran’s financial sector, layering onto sanctions VTB already carries over Russia’s war in Ukraine. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the action was part of “Operation Economic Outcast,” a campaign he announced in August 2026 to sever the financial channels that let Iran sell oil and access hard currency abroad. Any foreign bank that keeps dealing with VTB now risks its own US sanctions exposure, since correspondent accounts are the choke point US authorities use to cut a foreign bank off from the dollar system. That is the same mechanism, and the same kind of shadow-banking workaround, described in how detection works.

# September 13, 2026

Bangladesh anti-graft agency opens Tk11,000 crore laundering probe into ex-adviser

Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) said on September 13, 2026 that it has opened an inquiry into Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuiyan, a former adviser in the country’s interim government, over allegations covering roughly Tk13,000 crore (about $1 billion) in bribery, embezzlement and money laundering. A citizen complaint reviewed by the ACC alleges Mahmud helped move about Tk11,000 crore (roughly $890 million) out of the country through relatives, including his brothers-in-law and a nephew: Tk4,500 crore to Dubai, Tk3,000 crore to Singapore, Tk2,000 crore to Australia and Tk1,500 crore to Switzerland. Investigators say the money was used to buy villas, invest in foreign businesses and hold funds in Swiss bank accounts.

The remaining allegations concern bribes for government appointments, promotions and contract tenders during Mahmud’s tenure overseeing the Youth and Sports Ministry and local government projects. Mahmud, now a spokesperson for the National Citizen Party, has denied the claims as politically motivated and sent the ACC a legal notice demanding it retract a statement suggesting the allegations have “preliminary truth.” The ACC says no findings are established yet and the inquiry will trace the funds and everyone’s role. Moving bribe or embezzled money into foreign real estate and business investments to make it usable abroad is a classic laundering step; see how real estate purchases turn illicit cash into legitimate-looking assets.

Related: Real estate

# September 11, 2026

Six accused Black Axe leaders extradited to US in romance scam laundering case

Six Nigerian nationals were handed over to FBI and U.S. Secret Service agents at Cape Town International Airport on September 11, 2026, five years after a federal grand jury in New Jersey charged them with leading the Cape Town chapter of the Neo Black Movement of Africa, known as Black Axe. Prosecutors say the men ran romance scams and advance fee schemes from 2011 to 2021, using fake identities on dating sites and social media to build relationships with victims, then inventing emergencies, often tied to a construction job gone wrong, to ask for money.

More than 100 American women, including retirees, were defrauded of over $6 million, South African police said. Court documents describe how the group laundered the proceeds: some victims sent cash directly overseas, while others were persuaded to open U.S. bank accounts that the conspirators then controlled and used to move stolen money before it left the country, a pattern typical of romance scam money muling. The men face wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges in federal court in Trenton. Investigators explain how these funnel accounts work on the money mules and funnel accounts page.

Related: Funnel accounts and money mules

# September 10, 2026

Colombian national indicted over $135 million drug-to-stablecoin laundering scheme

A federal grand jury in Greenville, South Carolina, indicted William Andres Holguin Mendez, 40, of Colombia, on a single money laundering conspiracy count. Prosecutors say an FBI investigation that began in August 2023 traced drug proceeds moving through shell company bank accounts in the Greenville area into a single account at a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, all controlled by Holguin Mendez under the exchange’s Know Your Customer records.

From there, the indictment alleges, the cash was converted into stablecoin and moved to a foreign-based exchange, again registered to Holguin Mendez, before being converted to Colombian pesos and distributed across 207 Colombian bank accounts. Investigators say roughly $135 million passed through the scheme between March 2023 and May 2024. Holguin Mendez faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted and is detained pending trial; all charges remain accusations at this stage. The case was brought under the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, with the FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security Investigations involved. The stablecoin conversion step is explained on stablecoins and OTC brokers.

Related: Shell companies and nominees · Stablecoins and OTC brokers

# September 9, 2026

Treasury and DOJ dismantle Xinbi Guarantee, a $24 billion crypto laundering marketplace

On September 7, 2026, a federal court in Washington authorized the seizure of Telegram channels used by Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language marketplace where vendors advertised “washing” scam proceeds, building fake investment websites, and recruiting workers for Southeast Asian scam compounds. Two days later, the Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force and Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control moved together: OFAC designated Xinbi as a transnational criminal organization, along with Cambodia-based wallet developer Anwen Technology and Singapore-based messaging app developer SafeW Technology, and the Strike Force seized wallets and restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency linked to the network.

Treasury said Xinbi has processed the equivalent of over $24 billion in digital assets and cash since it launched around 2022, putting it among the largest “guarantee marketplace” laundering hubs identified so far, alongside Cambodia’s Huione Group. Xinbi worked like an escrow service for criminals: it held a buyer’s payment until a vendor’s laundering or scam-support job was finished, letting strangers who would never meet trust each other. Stablecoin issuer Tether assisted the investigation. How these marketplaces move stolen money into cash is explained on stablecoins and OTC brokers.

Related: Stablecoins and OTC brokers

# September 8, 2026

Europol dismantles 'Dubai Bank' hawala-style network tied to cocaine trafficking

Spain’s Policía Nacional, backed by Europol, arrested 21 people on July 22, 2026, tied to a clandestine money-transfer network investigators call the “Dubai Bank.” Six more international arrest warrants were carried out afterward in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and the Netherlands. Authorities identified, seized, or froze about EUR 20 million: 48 properties worth over EUR 14 million, luxury vehicles worth over EUR 1.6 million, and 121 bank accounts holding EUR 2.3 million.

The case grew out of a 2021 cocaine seizure off the Spanish coast that led investigators up the money trail to the network’s brokers. Rather than physically moving cash across borders, the network settled value through internal bookkeeping, trade transactions, and company accounts, matching each transfer with a token, often a banknote’s serial number, so brokers could verify a handoff without ever meeting. A leading figure in the network was named a Europol High Value Target. The United States, Netherlands, and Sweden also supported the investigation. This is a modern, large-scale version of the broker network described in how hawala works.

Related: Hawala and informal value transfer

# September 8, 2026

Ringleader of $245 million crypto theft and laundering ring pleads guilty

Malone Lam, a 22-year-old Singaporean citizen who had been living in Miami, pleaded guilty on September 8, 2026 to a racketeering conspiracy charge built around stealing cryptocurrency from victims he met through online gaming platforms. According to the Justice Department, Lam and his co-conspirators used social engineering, and at times home break-ins, to get the information needed to drain victims’ crypto wallets between October 2023 and May 2025. The largest single theft, almost $245.1 million taken from a Washington, D.C. resident targeted in August 2024, accounted for most of the scheme’s proceeds.

Rather than banking the money quietly, the group spent it in ways meant to be seen: nightclub tabs running up to $500,000 a night, luxury watches and handbags handed out at parties, rental mansions in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami, private jets, bodyguards, and exotic cars worth up to $3.8 million apiece. That kind of visible, fast spending is a signature of the last stage of laundering, explained on integration. Lam is the eleventh defendant to plead guilty in the case; a status hearing is set for December 8, 2026.

# September 3, 2026

FinCEN renews its Southwest border cash reporting order and narrows the map

FinCEN has reissued the geographic targeting order covering money services businesses near the Southwest border. The new order took effect on 3 September 2026, the day after the previous one lapsed, and runs to 1 March 2027. Inside the covered ZIP codes, a money services business must report currency transactions of $1,000 or more but not more than $10,000, and verify who is presenting them. That is a tenth of the ordinary $10,000 currency transaction report threshold, which still applies nationwide, as does the $2,000 suspicious activity report threshold for money services businesses.

The coverage map changed. This order lists ZIP codes in Cameron, El Paso, Hidalgo, Maverick and Webb Counties in Texas, and Bernalillo, Dona Ana and San Juan Counties in New Mexico. The order that ran from March to September 2026 also reached areas in Arizona and California, so the new one is a narrower and more targeted instrument rather than a straight renewal. Businesses newly brought in have until 3 October 2026 to comply. These orders exist because cash moved across a border in small, repeated amounts is hard to see in ordinary reporting, a pattern set out in structuring.

Related: Structuring (smurfing)

# September 1, 2026

AUSTRAC opens enforcement investigation into Western Union

Australia’s financial intelligence agency has opened an enforcement investigation into Western Union, one of the world’s largest international payment businesses. AUSTRAC said on 1 September 2026 that the investigation covers Western Union Financial Services Australia and the parent company, The Western Union Company, and that it has serious concerns the firm has failed to manage the money laundering risks attached to high-risk payment channels, customers and affiliates. AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas said payment service providers are internationally recognised as high risk for criminal exploitation. Nothing is proven at this stage: the regulator says it will decide what action to take, if any, only once the investigation is complete.

The step follows an external audit of Western Union that AUSTRAC ordered in July 2025 after raising concerns about customer due diligence and late or missing suspicious matter reports. Investigators will now examine whether the company’s AML program actually identifies and reduces risk, whether its transaction monitoring can recognise known laundering patterns, and how far the global head office shapes Australian compliance decisions. AUSTRAC said Western Union has committed to addressing the audit findings. Why transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reports carry so much weight is set out in detection and reporting.

# September 1, 2026

US seizes $560,000 in crypto raised for Hamas and takes over its donation sites

The US Justice Department said on 1 September 2026 that the FBI has seized about $560,000 in cryptocurrency donations intended for Hamas and taken control of the domains and servers the group used to collect them. According to the department, a group chat on an encrypted messaging platform pointed supporters to a fundraising website that handed out a rotating set of donation addresses, so no single wallet stayed in use long enough to become an obvious target. Three unsealed seizure warrants, dated 25 March 2025, 25 June 2025 and 10 October 2025, covered the funds.

Rotating addresses is a layering move. It spreads incoming money across many receiving points and forces anyone following the trail to link those points together first. It did not work here. Investigators used information from human sources alongside blockchain tracing to identify the addresses, and once the FBI held the fundraising infrastructure it could intercept donations as they arrived. The department said it also obtained information about thousands of people who had contacted the group online about donating. Why splitting funds across many steps so often fails is set out in layering.

# September 1, 2026

South Korea charges four over crypto sent to a Syrian group and vehicles shipped back

South Korean police disclosed on 1 September 2026 that four Uzbek nationals face charges under the country’s terrorism financing law over cryptocurrency payments to Katibat Tawhid wal Jihad, a Syria-based armed group designated by the United Nations. Police say the main suspect sent 4,267 units of the stablecoin USDT, worth roughly 6.3 million won, in seven transfers between August 2024 and April 2025. He was arrested in April 2025 after being placed on an Interpol red notice, and has been indicted and detained. The other three were investigated without being held.

The return leg is what makes the case unusual. Police allege money from the group came back out as goods rather than as payments: 11 used cars and two excavators, together worth about 170 million won, bought in Korea and shipped to Syria. Police described it as the first case they have handled in which funds received from a terrorist group were turned into vehicles and supplied in return. Nothing is proven while the trial continues. Moving value as traded goods instead of transfers is the core idea behind trade-based money laundering.

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML)

# August 30, 2026

Thailand plans tighter gold market rules to close laundering gaps

Thailand is preparing new rules for its gold market after officials said the trade has become a route for laundering criminal money. The Finance Ministry is working with the Bank of Thailand on legislation that would strengthen supervision of the industry and increase transparency over transactions, Vinit Visessuvanapoom, director-general of the Fiscal Policy Office and a ministry spokesman, told reporters on 28 August 2026. The plan covers physical bullion and online trading alike, and the government wants to move gold dealing toward a fully digital system so authorities can trace the source of the funds used to buy gold and where the proceeds go afterwards.

Gold attracts launderers for the same reasons it attracts savers: it holds its value, it sells quickly almost anywhere, and bars change hands without the record a bank transfer leaves behind. Rather than tax gold transactions for now, the ministry plans to bring the Gold Traders Association into a national committee that links financial data across the Finance Ministry and its Fiscal Policy Office, the Anti-Money Laundering Office, the Bank of Thailand and the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau. Why high-value goods get used to carry value that cash cannot carry safely is explained in trade-based money laundering.

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML)

# August 28, 2026

AUSTRAC starts issuing legal notices to firms that skipped Australia's new AML rules

Australia’s financial intelligence agency has started compelling businesses to say whether they fall under the country’s expanded money laundering rules. AUSTRAC said on 28 August 2026 that it has begun issuing section 167 notices to firms that appear to be providing designated services but have not enrolled with the regulator. The notices require real estate agents, accountants, lawyers and jewellers to hand over information so AUSTRAC can determine whether they are covered by the AML/CTF Act and whether they are meeting their obligations under it.

This is the first visible compliance step since Australia widened the regime on 1 July 2026 to cover sectors including real estate, legal, accounting, conveyancing, trust and company services, and dealers in precious stones and metals. Those professions sit at the point where large sums move into property, companies and other assets, which is why regulators treat them as gatekeepers rather than bystanders. AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas said enrolment is a basic legal requirement and that the time for preparation has passed. Why property purchases attract laundered money, and what the people handling those deals are expected to notice, is covered in real estate laundering.

Related: Real estate

# August 28, 2026

Houston man gets 95 months for laundering $3.1m of scam money into used-car exports

The Justice Department announced on 28 August 2026 that Oluwasegun Baiyewu, 40, of Houston, Texas, was sentenced the previous day to 95 months in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering. A federal jury convicted him in August 2025. According to court documents, between about May 2020 and October 2021 Baiyewu led a group of at least six co-conspirators in the United States and Nigeria that laundered more than $3.1 million taken from victims of business email compromise, romance and unemployment insurance fraud. Coordinating over encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp, they used the stolen money to buy used and salvaged cars in the United States, then arranged to ship the vehicles to Nigeria.

In one instance, prosecutors said a renewable energy company in Puerto Rico was tricked into wiring about $280,000 to accounts the group controlled, and that money went toward car purchases exported abroad. Turning fraud proceeds into goods and shipping them out moves value across a border without another suspicious wire, and the paperwork left behind looks like ordinary commerce. Investigators have traced the same used-car pipeline to West Africa in earlier cases, described in trade-based money laundering.

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML)

# August 28, 2026

US moves to cut off Banque Misr's UAE branches as a money laundering concern

The US Treasury’s FinCEN issued a proposed rule to designate the United Arab Emirates branches of Banque Misr, an Egyptian state-owned bank, as a primary money laundering concern under Section 311, which would cut them off from US correspondent banking. Treasury said the six UAE branches processed roughly $1.8 billion between January 2024 and June 2026 for 103 companies suspected of belonging to Iranian shadow-banking networks, and called the branches a critical node for Iran’s access to US dollars.

The action is part of a broader push to isolate Iran economically, announced alongside sanctions on an Iranian bank manager in Dubai and a Hong Kong front company accused of laundering for an Iranian exchange house. Section 311 designations are among the most severe tools in the AML arsenal: rather than fining a bank, they threaten to sever it from the dollar system entirely, the same mechanism used against Lebanese Canadian Bank in 2011 and Huione Group in 2025. How reporting and correspondent-bank controls feed actions like this is covered in how detection works.

# August 28, 2026

Two more sentenced over UK's largest criminal cash laundering case

Two more men have been sentenced over a Bradford operation that West Yorkshire Police call the largest investigation into criminal cash in UK legal history. Baqa Haider, 51, was jailed for six years and Nathan Rivers, 45, was given a 27 month term suspended for two years, both at Leeds Crown Court on 28 August 2026, after being convicted of money laundering at a trial that ended in July. Four other men were sentenced in March 2025 to terms ranging from ten years to eleven years and eight months, three of them in their absence after leaving the country.

The money moved through Fowler Oldfield Ltd, a long established scrap jewellery dealer that had legitimately bought gold for cash. Couriers delivered bags of notes to its Hall Lane premises, processed at times at a rate of £1.7 million a day. The company banked the cash and used it to buy high purity gold grain, which was shipped to Dubai under fake invoices. Police established that more than £200 million passed through the firm’s bank account between 2014 and 2016. The bank that held it, NatWest, was fined about £265 million in 2021 after a Financial Conduct Authority prosecution over its monitoring of the account. Turning cash into goods and paperwork is covered in trade-based money laundering.

Related: Trade based money laundering (TBML) · Cash-intensive front businesses

# August 28, 2026

Five charged with laundering $7.4m of elder scam money through 21 Washington shell companies

Federal prosecutors in Seattle indicted five men on 28 August 2026 for laundering the proceeds of scams that targeted elderly people across the United States. According to the indictment, between October 2024 and March 2026 they registered 21 shell companies in Washington State, opened about 44 bank accounts under fake identities, and rented commercial mailboxes in the companies’ names. Scammers posing as tech support, government or bank staff persuaded victims to mail cashiers’ checks and money orders there. The five are accused of depositing them and wiring the money on to accounts in Hong Kong and mainland China: more than $7.4 million from at least 77 victims.

Each is charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, ten counts of money laundering by concealment, and ten counts by spending. Those indicted:

• Hung Chieh Kuo, 27, of Bellevue
• Tung Wei Yeh, 31, of Bellevue
• Hsin Chien, 31, of Bothell
• You Wei Liew, 26, of Seattle
• Chengpeng Zhang, 40, of Seattle

The charges are allegations, none of the five has been convicted, and trial is scheduled for 9 November 2026. Paper companies and rented mailboxes give the money a business-shaped path, so incoming checks resemble customer payments rather than fraud proceeds. How companies with no real operations get used this way is explained in shell companies.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# August 27, 2026

Grain trading firm forfeits $5.2 million in UK laundering and sanctions probe

ENEX Premium Trading Limited, an agricultural trading company registered in St Kitts and Nevis and owned by Azerbaijani national Nadir Valiyev, agreed to forfeit more than $5.2 million (about £3.84 million) to settle a UK National Crime Agency civil recovery investigation into suspected money laundering and sanctions evasion. Reporting in 2024 alleged that Valiyev’s companies had been involved in shipping stolen Ukrainian grain, and the NCA froze the money with an Account Freezing Order that November. Investigators traced the funds to ENEX accounts in China that took in tens of millions of pounds from suspected front companies between July and September 2024, part of a network that moved money through UK electronic money institutions to be converted into cryptocurrency. Some of the companies that paid ENEX were later sanctioned by the United States for helping sell illicit Iranian oil.

The settlement involves no admission of unlawful conduct, and Valiyev denies any criminal activity. The case shows why investigators treat opaque offshore trading firms as a warning sign: layers of front companies can make suspect commodity revenue look like ordinary trade. Read how the corporate layer works in shell companies.

Related: Shell companies and nominees · Trade based money laundering (TBML)

# August 26, 2026

Tornado Cash retrial of Roman Storm pushed to April 2027

The retrial of Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm has been pushed back to April 26, 2027, with a final pretrial conference set for April 20, 2027, in New York. Prosecutors had originally sought an October 2026 date for retrying the two counts his August 2025 jury could not resolve: conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate sanctions, which together carry roughly 40 years of maximum exposure.

Storm was convicted in August 2025 only of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. He has not been sentenced on that count, and his motion for acquittal, argued in April 2026, remains undecided. The case is the central test of whether writing and deploying mixer code can support criminal liability, and its outcome will shape enforcement against privacy tools for years. Background on how mixers work and the full Tornado Cash saga is on the mixers, tumblers, and CoinJoin page.

Related: Mixers, tumblers, and CoinJoin

# August 20, 2026

Treasury sanctions 10 people over a courier network flying cash to Hizballah

The US Treasury sanctioned 10 people on 20 August 2026 over a network it says carried cash by hand to Hizballah. The Office of Foreign Assets Control said the couriers travelled on ordinary commercial airline flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the UAE and Iran, moving up to hundreds of millions of dollars between jurisdictions. Treasury named Turkish businessman Yunus Alper Yilmaz as the manager of the courier network and said he used Turkey-based exchange houses as business fronts, supplying companies and bank accounts for transfers connected to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. The designations were made under Executive Order 13224, and Treasury re-designated Hizballah itself under the same order as an entity directed by the IRGC-QF.

The whole point of a courier network is that the money never touches a bank. Wire transfers leave records that sanctions screening can read, while a bag carried onto a scheduled flight leaves a ticket and little else. That is why physical cash smuggling survives alongside every digital method, and why it is fragile: cash is bulky, couriers are stopped and searched, and someone still has to convert the notes at the far end. Couriers paired with exchange houses are the same arrangement described in hawala.

Related: Hawala and informal value transfer

# August 11, 2026

FinCEN makes the domestic ownership-reporting exemption permanent

FinCEN issued a final rule on August 11, 2026, effective August 14, that permanently adopts the framework it introduced by interim rule in March 2025: US-formed companies and US persons are exempt from beneficial-ownership reporting under the Corporate Transparency Act. Only foreign-formed companies registered to do business in the United States must file, and even they need not report US persons as beneficial owners.

The practical effect is that the US, which enacted the CTA in 2021 to end anonymous domestic shell companies, now collects ownership data on only a thin slice of entities. A Supreme Court petition on the statute’s constitutionality remains pending for the fall 2026 term. Why ownership registers matter to investigators, and how the US position now compares with the UK and Canada, is covered on the shell companies and nominees page.

Related: Shell companies and nominees

# August 3, 2026

UBS pays a record $125 million FinCEN penalty for broker-dealer AML failures

FinCEN assessed a $125 million civil penalty against UBS Financial Services on August 3, 2026, the largest it has ever imposed on a broker-dealer for Bank Secrecy Act violations. Between January 2019 and June 2023, the firm failed to monitor more than 50,000 foreign currency wires worth over $10 billion combined, ran inadequate due diligence on high-risk customers with ties to Russia and Latin America, and filed hundreds of suspicious activity reports late.

FinCEN called the conduct recidivist: UBS Financial Services had already paid a $14.5 million penalty in December 2018 for similar program failures. The case extends a pattern seen in banking enforcement, where the penalty that finally lands is for broken controls and missing reports rather than for any single laundering scheme. What those reports are supposed to catch, and why late filings matter, is explained in reporting: CTRs, SARs, and STRs.

# June 25, 2026

US seizes Huione infrastructure and moves to add H-Pay to the ban

The campaign against Cambodia’s Huione Group, the marketplace at the center of the pig-butchering scam economy, escalated in late June 2026. On June 23 the Justice Department announced the seizure of backend infrastructure used by Huione’s money-laundering services. Two days later FinCEN published a proposed rule to amend its Section 311 special measure, which has severed Huione from US correspondent banking since November 2025, so that it also covers H-Pay Service PLC and any defined successor entity.

The successor-entity concept is the notable move. Laundering marketplaces respond to bans by rebranding, as Garantex did by re-emerging as Grinex after its 2025 takedown, and the proposed rule is designed to make the designation follow the business rather than the name. How guarantee marketplaces and dollar stablecoins move scam proceeds is covered on the stablecoins and OTC brokers page.

Related: Stablecoins and OTC brokers