What the SEC can learn from its German peer BaFin
Posted 08/13/21
Money Laundering
This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to money laundering. You may also be interested in the following pages:
August 10, 2021
Five companies that operate the BitMEX cryptocurrency platform will pay a total of $100 million to resolve claims that the platform operated a facility to trade or process swaps without being approved as a Designated Contract Market (DCM) or a Swap Execution Facility (SEF), operated as an unregistered futures commission merchant (FCM), and failed to implement anti-money laundering procedures. HDR Global Trading Limited, 100x Holding Limited, ABS Global Trading Limited, Shine Effort Inc Limited, and HDR Global Services (Bermuda) Limited jointly operated BitMEX, which offered leveraged trading of cryptocurrency derivatives, including to customers in the U.S. BitMEX acted as a counterparty in certain transactions, and accepted bitcoin to margin digital asset derivative transactions. BitMEX allowed customers to access its platform and conduct derivative trading without verifying customer identity beyond the collection of an email address, and failed to report suspicious activity as required. As part of the settlement, BitMEX certified that it terminated its U.S. business operations, barred access to the platform by U.S. customers, and had undertaken verification procedures for existing customers. $50 million of the $100 million penalty will be paid to the CFTC, with $30 million of the remainder paid immediately to FinCEN, and an additional $20 million to FinCEN suspended pending defendants’ undertaking of specific compliance procedures. CFTC; FinCENAugust 4, 2021
For causing more than $100 million in losses to employers, employees, financial institutions, and financing companies and laundering more than $1 billion in stolen funds, Michael Mann, the owner of shuttered payroll service companies ValueWise and MyPayrollHR, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison. In addition to misappropriating payroll funds and money laundering, Mann was also found to have fraudulently obtained tens of millions of dollars in loans from three financing companies, as well as fraudulently obtained lines of credit from several banks in the New York area. NY AG; USAO NDNYMay 27, 2021
Bank Julius Baier & Co. Ltd. (BJB), a Swiss bank with international operations, will pay $79 million in penalties and enter into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement to resolve a criminal investigation into the bank’s involvement in a money laundering conspiracy that fueled an international soccer bribery scheme. BJB admitted that it conspired to launder over $36 million in bribes through the United States to soccer officials with FIFA and other federations, in furtherance of a scheme in which sports marketing companies bribed soccer officials in exchange for broadcasting rights to soccer matches. BJB’s Anti-Money Laundering controls failed to detect or prevent the money laundering, despite knowing that certain client accounts were associated with international soccer, which was generally understood to involve high-corruption risks. A BJB executive directed that the opening of these accounts be fast-tracked in the hope that the clients would provide lucrative business. DOJMay 12, 2021
Registered broker-dealer GWFS Equities Inc. will pay a penalty of $1.5 million to settle allegations that it failed to respond appropriately when it detected external bad actors gaining, or attempting to gain, access to the retirement accounts of participants in the employer-sponsored retirement plans it serviced, including through the use of improperly obtained electronic login information, user names, email addresses, and passwords. There was no allegation that this personal identifying information was disclosed in a breach of GWFS systems. However, the bad actors used this information to request distributions from plan participant accounts. While GWFS detected and blocked many of these attempts, the SEC charged that GWFS failed to file suspicious activity reports, or filed incomplete SARs, with respect to the account takeovers. SECMay 4, 2021
Alberto Orian Gonzalez-Delgado was sentenced to 210 months in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud. He is the last of eight individuals to be sentenced for a money laundering scheme in Florida and Michigan involving the use of nominee owners to fraudulently purchase home health agencies and then bill Medicare for services that were never provided to Medicare beneficiaries. The defendants caused the payment of approximately $53 million in fraudulent claims. DOJApril 30, 2020
The owner of dog training school Universal K-9, Inc., Bradley Lane Croft, has been sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison for defrauding the Veteran Administration’s GI Bill program of more than $1.5 million in connection with 185 fraudulent claims relating to 132 veterans. Croft had been found guilty of providing false information on instructor names, certifications, and training to the Texas Veterans Commission, laundering money, and submitting fraudulent income tax returns for 2016 and 2017. USAO WDTXWhen the Deli’s Not Just a Deli
Posted 04/28/21
Why FinCEN Should Quickly Establish Regulations for the New AML Whistleblower Program
Posted 04/9/21
