FinancialCrimeRiskOfficers.com

This spam-scam is remarkable. It's as if the sender thinks that by throwing everything at the wall, something will stick. But for the even slightly alert, it fails before the target even opens it.

As governments around the world ponder the possibility of making banks liable for losses suffered by customers who are the victims of e.g. phishing scams, there are companies that actively assist the fraudsters to get away with it. Let's start at the top: Google.

Clearview AI Inc. is a company that collects facial images from a disparate range of sources and makes them available to its customers.

The UK's data protection department, the Information Commissioner's Office, has banned the practice within the UK. The UK acted in concert with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The investigations focused on Clearview AI Inc’s use of people’s images, data scraping from the internet and the use of biometric data for facial recognition.

What effect might that have on remote verification?

"Go back to the data." "The answer's in the data." "Data is the key".

Maybe.

Until it goes wrong.

"LAST & FINAL WARNING NOTICE" screams the headline with the target's email address added for good effect.

And it goes downhill from there.

Fake from address: Bar.Petermantle@Un.org
Reply address: Bar.Petermantle@yandex.com

A Los Angeles man was sentenced this week to 240 months in federal prison for operating a Ponzi scheme that raised at least USD650 million with bogus claims that investor money would be used to acquire licensing rights to films that HBO and Netflix purportedly had agreed to distribute abroad.

Be prepared to be amazed.

Stefan Cassella, principal of Asset Forfeiture Law LLC in the USA has produced a fascinating list of cases in which the USA, at a federal level, has used civil forfeiture in relation to proceeds of criminal conduct and assets used in the commission of offences. Many of the cases are in rem. The USA is not the only country to pursue such assets but it is unusually active in the use of in rem (i.e. against the asset compared with against the person) actions in doing so. The list demonstrates an extraordinary range of criminal conduct and of assets forfeited (isn't that a much better description than "recovered"?)

It's been modified from the advance fee fraud e-mails that we are used to and someone has been to writing lessons.

It starts with an unusual approach, then moves into the same technique as we've seen from this name dozens of times over many years.

Oh, and he uses UN.ORG as the "from" address. Cheeky.

Here's our pick of the day's top five financial crime related stories picked up around the 'web.

Today's top five stories in financial crime risk and compliance.

Today's Top Five Financial Crime Risk and Compliance stories.

Today's Top Five financial crime risk and compliance stories.

Today's Top Five financial crime risk and compliance stories.

Don't miss our round-up of our top five financial crime risk and compliance (and adjacent) stories this morning.

This morning, a spam-scam arrived claiming that a subscription had been renewed.

Then a few minutes later, we came across a news article that had something in common.

Is it pure coincidence?