Iraq’s financial regulators are raising alarms over a growing trend in which social-media personalities are being leveraged as tools for illicit financial transfers.   According to officials, the combination of online visibility, rapid audience engagement, and loosely monitored revenue channels has created conditions that criminal groups can exploit when institutional controls lag behind evolving digital behaviour. The Central Bank of Iraq reports that some transaction flows

Colorado’s gaming authorities have issued a $50,000 fine against BetMGM after determining that the sportsbook violated state regulations by accepting wagers on individual student-athlete performance, a betting category explicitly banned under Colorado law.   The New Jersey-based operator notified regulators of the issue itself, revealing 48 prohibited bets placed on NCAA basketball and football events between March 2023 and October 2024.   The unlawful wagers involved two men

Seven of Europe’s leading gambling authorities have committed to deeper collaboration in an effort to curb the accelerating spread of illegal online gambling, cautioning that rapidly evolving digital ecosystems are enabling unlicensed operators to slip past national regulatory systems. Representatives from Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, and Spain cemented this alliance during a meeting held on 12 November 2025 at Spain’s Directorate General for

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has formally withdrawn its lawsuit against SolarWinds and the company’s chief information security officer, bringing an end to a high-profile case that centered on allegations the firm misled investors about its security posture prior to the major 2020 supply chain breach.   A joint motion submitted on November 20, 2025, by the SEC, SolarWinds, and CISO Timothy G. Brown requested the court to voluntarily dismiss the action. In

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have brought a wire fraud charge against 53-year-old Derek Wachob, the chief executive of Sapulpa, Oklahoma-based steel pipe manufacturer Paragon Industries, alleging his involvement in a 66 million dollar scheme.   An indictment unsealed on November 18 claims that between October 2022 and August 2024, Wachob directed a fraudulent operation that targeted individual investors, a bank, an investment firm, and at least two

Turkish investigators are scrutinising how a licensed electronic money institution and an associated insurance company allegedly enabled criminal proceeds from illegal betting operations to seep into the country’s financial system. The inquiry centres on corporate entities tied to fintech entrepreneur Ozan Özerk, whose broader business network includes firms previously connected to payment streams linked to a sprawling online fraud operation exposed by investigative journalis

In September 2024, Wynn Las Vegas acknowledged to the U.S. Department of Justice that it had “conspired with unlicensed money transmitting businesses that moved millions of dollars in illicit funds through the casino,” agreeing to forfeit an unprecedented $130 million. At the time, the public learned little about what exactly drove the largest-ever forfeiture involving a U.S. casino. The government’s announcement offered only sweeping descriptions, leaving unanswered question

A high-stakes money-laundering dispute has surfaced through a federal lawsuit in North Dakota, where plaintiffs contend that Binance and its former leadership permitted extensive financial movements that allegedly aided Hamas both prior to and following the October 2023 attacks. The complaint argues that the exchange’s structural and governance choices made it possible for crypto assets to circulate covertly in ways that would have faced major barriers in fully regulated fina

Mounting concern over increasingly coordinated financial schemes targeting Korean citizens has pushed the KoFIU’s AML agenda into a phase of acute urgency. Patterns tied to cross-border fraud networks, synchronized mule operations, and the rapid circulation of illicit funds through both banking and nonbank channels have expanded, prompting regulators to reconsider how domestic institutions identify and address structural vulnerabilities. The most recent industry meeting revea

India and Italy have elevated their cooperation to an unprecedented level after both governments agreed to intensify joint measures against global money laundering systems that violent extremist groups rely on. Their discussions during the G20 in Johannesburg shifted a routine diplomatic exchange into a coordinated framework aimed squarely at dismantling clandestine financial pipelines. This cooperation places Narendra Modi and Giorgia Meloni among the leaders most willing to

The UK National Crime Agency has revealed how Russian intelligence services funneled funds to a convicted espionage network via a cash-to-crypto laundering operation run by businesswoman Ekaterina Zhdanova, who sought to bankroll former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek’s spy ring. This disclosure connects billion-dollar laundering networks to geopolitics, organized crime, and state-sponsored activity across at least 28 towns and cities in the United Kingdom. According to Bloom

Jersey’s long-standing engagement with Roman Abramovich now sits at the crossroads of sanctions policy, offshore wealth management, and data protection law. For years, the island presented itself as a sophisticated hub for high-net-worth individuals, including the Russian billionaire, whose trusts and companies shifted vast assets to Jersey. Since 2022, however, this relationship has morphed into a complex mix of criminal investigations, asset restraints, and litigation over

Real-estate brokerages across Canada are confronting heightened oversight from FINTRAC under the expanding anti-money-laundering framework, and five recent enforcement actions illustrate how gaps in anti-money-laundering real estate compliance can quickly translate into significant sanctions. With real-estate brokerage AML duties now squarely in regulators’ focus, and each decision carrying a defined Canada AML penalty, the following report examines each case in detail, highl

The case involving Videoslots Limited underscores how rapidly shifting deposit activity and opaque digital voucher payments can expose serious laundering risks when automated systems drive the majority of oversight. The operator was hit with a substantial financial penalty after investigators identified repeated failures across customer monitoring, source-of-funds evaluation and behavioural assessment. These shortcomings reveal how criminal networks can take advantage of weak

A vast criminal ecosystem worth billions has been revealed by the National Crime Agency (NCA), which uncovered a sophisticated cash-to-crypto infrastructure operating across at least twenty-eight towns and cities throughout the UK. According to investigators, this network transformed profits from drug trafficking, firearms supply, and organised immigration crime into cryptocurrency before funnelling it into a Kyrgyz financial institution acquired specifically for sanctions ev

US regulators are examining claims that TD Bank’s anti-money-laundering remediation disproportionately targeted employees of Chinese descent, raising questions about whether corrective compliance processes evolved into patterns of internal bias. As the bank intensified investigative measures in response to major AML failures, internal reviews reportedly focused most heavily on Chinese and Chinese American staff, particularly those working in branches serving New York City’s C

The United States and China have each rolled out major enforcement offensives aimed at sprawling criminal networks that have turned parts of Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand into entrenched hotspots for online scams and illicit gambling. These areas—now deeply embedded in operations powered by forced labour, digital fraud, and crypto-enabled money flows—have become focal points for both countries as they escalate efforts against transnational crime. In one of its most sw

Binance is redefining global assumptions about crypto crime controls after newly released figures showed a steep decline in illicit activity moving through the exchange. What many once considered an improbable shift has now positioned Binance as a leading case study in large-scale AML transformation, having pushed criminal exposure to levels rarely observed across digital trading platforms. The findings have generated significant global attention because the exchange handles

A sprawling fraud scheme targeting a federal healthcare program and the layered laundering of its illicit proceeds has revealed a major compliance vulnerability in the sector. The case, involving individuals in California, centered on the submission of false claims to a national medical benefits program and the subsequent movement of the funds through complex structures, illustrating how criminal actors exploit healthcare systems to generate and conceal illicit profits. At th

A new wave of reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) indicates that bad actors have been able to channel vast sums of cryptocurrency through exchanges, brokers, and off-ramp services, with similar laundering behaviors recurring even as several platforms operated under U.S. sanctions, plea agreements, or the oversight of court-appointed monitors. ICIJ’s project, titled “The Coin Laundry,” highlights a widening gap between the data permane