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Washington 5 December 2019 – Today the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action against Evil Corp, the Russia-based cybercriminal organization responsible for the development and distribution of the Dridex malware.

The trouble with looking for transactions ‘consistent’ with ‘known’ patterns ‘indicative’ of child exploitation payments to countries with ‘known’ risks is that countless legitimate payments exhibit similar features, says Dr Ron Pol of AML Assurance and La Trobe University.

AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti money-laundering and terrorism financing regulator, has today applied to the Federal Court of Australia for civil penalty orders against Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac).

The civil penalty orders relate to systemic non-compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act). AUSTRAC alleges Westpac contravened the AML/CTF Act on over 23 million occasions.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has issued a warning about a fraudulent website.

Sorry, idiot. If you are going to try to scam us, at least don't make it clear right from the outset that it's a fraud.

A financial adviser has closed its "artificial intelligence" driven advisory system. The quality of advice and the supervision of the system were both causes for concern by the regulator in a landmark case about the deployment of computer-driven, what used to be called "expert", systems with implications across the entire spectrum of financial and other services including customer due diligence in relation to financial crime risk management. It's a potential game-changer for the rapid rise of lightly regulated fintechs.

A notice published on the website of Standard Chartered Bank, Malaysia, says that moneys that have until now been covered by the Central Bank's deposit guarantee scheme are no longer so covered. Especially surprising is the formal distinguishing between Mainland and Labuan bank accounts.

The Takata airbag scandal raises important questions for insurers in this and other cases of recall. And how Big Data can be used for good.

An article published by CNBC ("Here’s why regulators are so worried about Facebook’s digital currency") says in its teaser "Facebook’s argument is that it won’t be minting new money with its digital currency."

That is absolutely untrue. This is why.

Yesterday, it was reported that a former branch manager with National Australia Bank had been convicted of fraud and that other prosecutions were in the pipeline. Today, ASIC, the Australian financial regulator, has said that it has issued proceedings against the bank. Is it a coincidence? One thinks not.

Australia allows merchants to charge to customers reimbursement of the charges it pays to payment card companies. It is not permitted that surcharges are applied. A car rental company has been ordered to pay AUD350,000 in penalties for overcharging. Are airlines, including foreign operators, next in line?

Perhaps in the Arab world the usual hook for spam-scammers of a few hundred thousand dollars, or even a couple of million, is small change. So this fraud is offering me more than 25 million (undefined) dollars in a most unusual manner. But then it turns to a bog standard, old fashioned, Nigerian (advance fee fraud) Scam.

Changing language means that the word "dope" when referring to drugs has moved on from marijuana, usually to heroin where it has effectively reversed into that use from the term "doped up," meaning in a highly drugged state. But it's also mutated from the equivalent of "it's the dope" meaning "it's the best" to "it's dope" meaning, approximately, very good. But all of these uses are relatively new: originally "a dope" was a stupid person. So, now you understand the headline, read the article which refers to a disturbing form of spam.

Following consultation on a number of proposed legislative changes that were set out in Consultation Paper No. 124 the Dubai Financial Services Authority Board, after due consideration of consultees’ comments, made amendments to the DFSA Rulebook as described below. The amendments come into force on 1 July 2019.