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To explain the fraud schemes known as business email compromise (BEC) and executive impersonation that are growing in popularity, and the threat they pose to financial institutions.

This article explains BEC and executive impersonation and how they are carried out, and discusses how regulations and practical operational steps are trying to address this fraud issue.

Financial institutions should understand the potential for legal and regulatory risks posed by BEC and executive impersonation, and consider taking steps to create a proactive, culture of skepticism and heightened awareness to combat this type of fraud.

This article is adapted from the original report issued by the American Institute of CPAs and has been updated to address specifics concerning financial institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore dynamic issues relating to Ponzi and other fraudulent investment schemes to demonstrate how scammers convince victims of investment opportunities that turn out to be nothing but fraudulent. Specifically, it explores the nature of Ponzi, Pyramid, Advance fees scams and the mechanisms used to defraud unsuspecting victims of their money. The risks associated with Ponzi schemes can be gleaned in the fraud case of Bernie Madoff (1998) who had been running a Ponzi scheme in the USA for 20 years and reaping investors of their returns without ever discovering it until the business collapsed. The other notorious investment scams include “the Nigerian letter frauds” which combine the threat of impersonation fraud with a variation of an advance fee scheme in which a letter is mailed to offer recipients the “opportunity” to share in a percentage of millions of dollars that the author – a self-proclaimed government official – is trying to transfer out of his country. This article assesses the possibility of using anti-money laundering regulatory tools such as a “risk based approach” and “Know Your Customer” to protect victims of fraudulent investment schemes.

The paper was written by analysis of primary and secondary data and by utilising newspaper reports on different types of fraudulent investment schemes and the context in which they normally happen in practice. It has also utilized case studies and relevant examples to demonstrate different typologies of fraudulent schemes and the possibility of using anti-money laundering regulatory tools to regulate them.

The findings suggest that many people who fall victims of fraudulent investment schemes such as Ponzi and advance fee fraud are not gullible but lack knowledge of their sophistication and how they operate to defraud unsuspecting victims of their savings.

The paper was largely a library-based research, and there were no interviews carried out to corroborate some of the data used in writing it. This minimises inherent bias in the use of secondary data sources to undertake a study.

The practical implication of the paper is to highlight the inherent risks in Ponzi and other fictitious investment schemes that are often cleverly conjured to exploit ignorance of the public and defraud them of their savings. It demonstrates that while financial institutions can use their regulatory tools such as KYC to safeguard financial markets from criminal exploitation, people should be vigilant to avoid falling victims of criminal exploitation and lose their savings.

With globalisation, the market is awash with different types of investment opportunities, but people need to keep in mind that it has also created opportunities for criminal exploitation. Some opportunities that are being offered such as advance fee and other schemes are cleverly devised to exploit ignorance of the public. Therefore, this paper highlights the pitfalls which potential investors need to bear in mind when deciding on where to invest and how to invest their money.

Research on Ponzi schemes, advance fee fraud and misuse of letters of credit do not seem to have received proportionate scholarly attention as other forms of financial crimes. This paper, therefore, addresses a need in the market on many issues it relates.

This chapter explores the laws and unique challenges associated with the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime. Crimes that involve the misuse of computers (e.g., hacking, denial of service, and ransomware attacks) and criminal activity that uses computers to commit the act are both covered (e.g., fraud, theft, and money laundering). This chapter also describes the roles of the various federal agencies involved in investigating cybercrime, common cybercrime terms and trends, the statutes frequently used to prosecute cybercrimes, and the challenges and complexity of investigating cybercrime.

Some have argued that organised crime is a problem of the last quarter of the 20th century and in the case of most states is a new phenomenon. Of course, so much depends upon what is meant by organised crime. Groups of individuals formed and managed to perpetrate acts against the law are nothing new. Nor is it novel that the primary motivation of such enterprises is economic gain — spurred on by ‘plain old‐fashioned’ greed and corruption. Banditry, smuggling, racketeering and piracy were just as much a problem for the praetors and the vigils of ancient Rome as they are today for the Italian authorities. What has changed is the criminals' ability to operate beyond the reach of the domestic legal system and, therefore, be able to conduct an enterprise in crime that is not so amenable to the traditional criminal justice system and its agents. Of course, in truth, thinking criminals have always sought to place themselves beyond the reach of the law and it was not just a matter of having a faster horse. Corruption of officials and the patronage of powerful individuals whose interests, for whatever reason, might be at variance with those of the state are tried and tested tools. It has always been recognised that even if as a matter of theory jurisdiction was unfettered, the practicalities are such as to render enforcement parochial. Thus, when Henry II of England was asked towards the end of the 12th century how far his writ ran, he responded ‘as far as my arrows reach’. While developments in ballistic technology might render this a relatively useful approach to dealing with the international criminal, in the vast majority of cases the criminal law in its application, or at least administration, will be confined within domestic borders. Developments in technology, communication, travel and the liberalisation of movement, whether of persons, things or wealth, have all combined to give the criminal enterprise of today the same ability as any other business to move from one jurisdiction to another, or involve in a single act two or more different jurisdictions.

The petty level insurance fraud, apparently committed by ordinary members of the community, is costing insurance companies millions of pounds a year. Those losses are passed on to the consumer. So it is everyone's loss. This problem appears to be prevalent in all Western countries However, it is in the USA where they appear to have both learnt and lost the most. As the problems in the UK are appearing to reach the scale of those which have already been encountered in the USA, law enforcement agencies and the insurance companies can ill afford to ignore the lessons learnt by the Americans. This paper describes the types of insurance frauds and those measures being undertaken to counter them in the USA. In so doing, the author has created a typology of those counter measures being undertaken.

This paper aims to explore current knowledge of business email compromise (BEC) fraud, or approaches that specifically target organisations for financial gain, through the exploitation of trusted relationships. BEC fraud affects organisations globally and is estimated to have netted offenders over US$26bn since 2016. Despite the sheer magnitude of these losses, there is a dearth of academic research seeking to better understand this crime type, and prevent it from occurring.

This review summarises the known literature on BEC fraud. It uses a variety of academic and industry sources to ascertain the current state of knowledge, including how it is perpetrated, its impact (on businesses and individuals), how law enforcement have responded and its prevention.

This review highlights many gaps in knowledge surrounding BEC fraud. There has been a large focus on the technical aspects of BEC fraud, to the detriment of the human elements. Often, BEC fraud is successful through targeted and effective use of social engineering techniques and is able to overcome any technical solutions through the manipulation of personal relationships. Further, while the financial impacts of BEC fraud are obvious, there is no known research which has explored the non-financial harms of BEC fraud (across organisational and individual perspectives). With companies starting to (unsuccessfully) take legal action against those who have responded, there is a clear need to understand how organisations can better respond to incidents when they occur. Finally, there are gaps in knowledge on what is the best combination of both technical and human measures to prevent BEC fraud.

This review is based on information presently available, and as indicated, there are significant gaps in what is currently known.

This review highlights the need to undertake research into the current gaps, with a view to improving best practice knowledge on prevention and response.

Currently unknown, BEC fraud is posited to have significant impacts at both personal and collective levels. Increased knowledge of these non-financial impacts will improve how organisations respond to BEC fraud and how employees can be supported before and after an incident occurs.

Despite the magnitude of the problem, there is limited academic scholarship on BEC fraud. This literature review offers a summary of current knowledge and advocates a strong research agenda moving forward.

This paper aims to help build awareness with the regulatory, enforcement and customs authorities as well as reporting entities about money laundering risks and vulnerabilities of the Mavrodi Mondial Movement (MMM) scheme, and how to mitigate them.

The research took the form of a desk study, which analyzed various documents and reports such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) typologies reports in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2013 and 2014 on new payment methods (NPMs) which focused on the potential for NPM to be misused by criminals; the identification of risk factors which can significantly differ from one new payment product or service to another, depending on functionality; and risk mitigants which can be tailored to a particular new payment product or service to address its specific risk profile.

This paper presents the following findings and recommendations: high-risk customers such as politically exposed persons (PEPs) could exploit the non-face-to-face feature of MMM by using the identity of low-risk customers (e.g. pensioners) to open MMM accounts. The Bitcoin funding option may present a higher money laundering risk than Bank wire, MasterCard, Visa Debit and Interac. The electronic nature of Bitcoins provides in principle a good foundation for effective record keeping and the monitoring of transactions. The money laundering risks associated with Goldmoney are very minimal when compared to Bitcoin. MMM Nigeria is therefore recommended to adopt Goldmoney as its preferred method of online payment for MMM transactions.

While most publications on MMM are focused on fraud, this paper focuses on the money laundering risks and vulnerabilities associated with the MMM scheme.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the opening phrase of a phishing email influences the action taken by the recipient.

Two types of phishing emails were sent to 593 employees, who were asked to provide personally identifiable information (PII). A personalised spear phishing email opening was randomly used in half of the emails.

Nineteen per cent of the employees provided their PII in a general phishing email, compared to 29 per cent in the spear phishing condition. Employees having a high power distance cultural background were more likely to provide their PII, compared to those with a low one. There was no effect of age on providing the PII requested when the recipient’s years of service within the organisation is taken into account.

This research shows that success is higher when the opening sentence of a phishing email is personalised. The resulting model explains victimisation by phishing emails well, and it would allow practitioners to focus awareness campaigns to maximise their effect.

The innovative aspect relates to explaining spear phishing using four socio-demographic variables.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the anti-money laundering measures of the UK and Nigeria, to determine what the best approach is. The best approach is likely the one that strikes a fair balance between protecting the financial system against money laundering and promoting financial inclusion.

This paper relies mainly on primary and secondary data drawn from the public domain. It also relies on documentary research.

This paper critically analysed the anti-money laundering measures of the UK and Nigeria to determine that the anti-money laundering measures of Nigeria does not strike a fair balance between protecting the financial system against money laundering and promoting financial inclusion because it does not expressly provide for verification of a customer’s identity at the account opening stage for low risk accounts. The paper, however, determined that the anti-money laundering measures of the UK does strike a fair balance between protecting the financial system against money laundering and promoting financial inclusion because it requires customer identification and verification before the establishment of a business relationship for customers who want to open a basic bank account.

This paper focuses on the anti-money laundering and financial inclusion measures in the UK’s Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism in Banks and Other Financial Institutions in Nigeria) Regulations, 2013.

This paper offers a critical analysis of the anti-money laundering and financial inclusion measures of the UK and Nigeria as provided in the UK’s Payment Accounts Regulations 2015 and the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism in Banks and Other Financial Institutions in Nigeria) Regulations, 2013. The paper will provide recommendations on how the measures could be strengthened. This is the only article to adopt this kind of approach.