TEACHING TRADECRAFT AND EMPLOYING AI CAN TAKE A BITE OUT OF MONEY LAUNDERING CRIME

I am extremely disturbed that my warning to the banking community that its failure to teach its compliance officers advanced money laundering Tradecraft is one of principal causes of the current failure to interdict laundrymen in real-time has not been heeded. With the knowledge of precisely how money launderers operate, and employing Artificial Intelligence-powered platforms to expose those techniques in progress, compliance officers can now actually shut down those laundrymen and their cash cleaning methods, for the first time in memory.

I fear that the true reason we don't see advanced Tradecraft seminar and lectures at compliance events is because the so-called experts speaking at those functions are not themselves familiar with the esoteric and obscure varieties of money laundering methods, because they only have had limited exposure to them. How many times have I attended lectures, only to see one instance of laundering showcases and discussed at a lecture; where can a compliance officer learn about all the others? the answer is that those who profess expertise do not know, and in their arrogance, they ignore the only group who is competent to teach all those methods: former laundrymen.

Frankly, if you haven't actually participated in those techniques, and observed first-hand how they work, how can you possibly show how they can be identified? Where are the vulnerabilities of each method; where can a smart compliance officer find the specific indicators that a particular tactic is being employed?

For example, there are a number of variations used by money launderers conducting trade-based money laundering successfully on a global basis, but nowhere are those permutations of TBML ever covered in a lecture? All that we see if the most common garden variety technique. No wonder the efforts of compliance to rein in TBML have been an abject failure; billions are successfully laundered each month, with impunity.

If any compliance director honestly wants his staff to know how the world of the money launderer works, real Tradecraft, so that they can now actually use the advantages of Artificial Intelligence to stop money laundering cold in their shop, reach out to yours truly, or any other ex-laundryman willing to teach them the tricks of the trade. Make it so dangerous for any money launderer to attempt to operate at your bank that they will avoid it altogether.