Money Laundering Indicators

  • Account transactions that are inconsistent with past deposits or withdrawals such as cash, cheques, wire transfers, etc.
  • Transactions involving a high volume of incoming or outgoing wire transfers, with no logical or apparent purpose that come from, go to, or transit through locations of concern that is sanctioned countries, non-cooperative nations and sympathizer nations.
  • Unexplainable clearing or negotiation of third party cheques and their deposits in foreign bank accounts.
  • Structuring at multiple branches or the same branch with multiple activities.
  • Corporate layering, transfers between bank accounts of related entities or charities for no apparent reasons.
  • Periodic transfers made by several people to the same beneficiary or related persons.
  • Lack of apparent fund raising activity, for example a lack of small cheques or typical donations associated with charitable bank deposits.
  • Using multiple accounts to collect funds that are then transferred to the same foreign beneficiaries
  • Transactions with no logical economic purpose, that is, no link between the activity of the organization and other parties involved in the transaction.
  • Overlapping corporate officers, bank signatories, or other identifiable similarities associated with addresses, references and financial activities.
  • Cash debiting schemes in which deposits in the US correlate directly with ATM withdrawals in countries of concern. Reverse transactions of this nature are also suspicious.
  • Issuing cheques, money orders or other financial instruments, often numbered sequentially, to the same person or business, or to a person or business whose name is spelled similarly.
  • Transfers over a short period of time of low amount that together represent a large sum of money.
  • Mismatch between the economic activity, country of origin, or person and the money remittance received.
  • Sudden inflow of funds in cash followed by sudden outflow through financial instruments such as drafts and cheques.