In the “Weekly Round-Up” we summarise and give extra reading suggestions for some of the past weeks financial crime news headlines, powered by Acuminor’s crime universe ThreatView® .
Hello, it is time to share some of this week’s interesting reads if you want something to dig into it during your weekend. To start with some shorter stories.
The Dutch police have made the first seizure of NTFs, the virtual asset was in the hands of a couple of fraudsters. Seizing is NFTs is not that different from capturing other types of virtual assets, which the Dutch police have extensive experience.
NL Times – Dutch police seize NFT’s for the first time ever
The Irish police now warn of organised crime infiltrating sports clubs to “fix” matches. This can be a very lucrative business since you can launder funds through betting operators and at the same time gain proceeds in the running of the scheme instead of paying commission in other more classics money laundering techniques.
The Irish Times – Organised criminals infiltrating teams to fix matches, Garda warns
Europol has had an action day with the Romanian Police and the United Kingdom Intelligence Directorate against human traffickers.
EUROPOL – Love me not: human traffickers earned up to EUR 1 800 per day per victim
The cryptoanalysis form Elliptic has investigated the hack of the decentralised finance project, Ronin Bridge, that led to a massive theft of virtual assets and, subsequently, money laundering.
Elliptic – Elliptic Traces $540 Million Stolen From the Ronin DeFi Bridge
CNN reports that several oil tankers have started to turn off their transponders, thus going dark. This method can be used for legitimate reasons, i.e., travelling in pirate-infested waters. But it does not seem like that is the issue right now.
CNN Business – Russian oil tankers are vanishing off the map
For the longer reads this week. Vice World and OCCRP have made a joint investigation into how Lithuanian gangs have taken over the heroin trade in Ireland using slave labour.
OCCRP – The Lithuanian Gang that Took Over Ireland’s Heroin Trade Using Baltic Slaves
VICE – How ‘The Russians’ Took Hold of Ireland’s Heroin Trade
For you interested in the cybercrime sphere, the FBI has released their Internet Crime report with statistics and information on the past year’s development in the USA.
And finally, the FIU in Malta has released a guiding document on how to work with compliance surrounding beneficial ownership.
FIAU Malta – Compliance with Beneficial Ownership Obligations by Company Service Providers
