While analysing past behaviour might be successful in catching certain serial offenders, criminals that want to launder money anticipate this way of working and typically will not stick to a pattern.
Still, anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud systems are designed to act like our aforementioned officer. They are set to follow rules based on yesterday’s criminal behaviour while criminals are already making their next move, avoiding patterns and aiming for confusion, dragging risk and compliance professionals into an endless cat and mouse game.
We are seeing a level of sophistication where money trails are obscured by regulatory arbitrage, shell companies and thousands of money mules. All of which are virtually impossible to track down and get ahead of.
