On 9/29/2020, FinCEN Director, Kenneth Blanco, presented a speech at the ACAMS Virtual AML Conference. After beginning the speech with a discussion on FinCEN’s response to the global health crisis, Director Blanco shared some fraud trends FinCEN is seeing related to COVID-19. Though much was a reiteration of applicable advisories issued by FinCEN, it was explained that the most common trend seen in COVID-19 related SARs involves fraudsters “targeting multiple COVID-19 related government stimulus programs, employing money mules and cyber techniques.”
Specifically, Director Blanco gave the following examples of fraudsters using cyber platforms for scams:
“FinCEN is observing fraudsters coordinate plans against various state unemployment programs on dark web forums, and discuss direct attacks on states with weaker controls. Fraudsters also use dark web forums to sell previously hacked personally identifiable information (PII) and instructions on using it to obtain unemployment and other benefits. Law enforcement also has noted fake websites that appear legitimate to trick victims into making fraudulent donations or entering PII and confidential banking data. Fraud actors harvest and exploit this data to apply for unemployment benefits under the victims’ names.
Fraudsters are advertising services instructing individuals on how to apply for unemployment insurance, the PPP, and the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program on social media platforms such as Telegram and SnapChat, often for a fee. Dark web vendors are selling similar data, instructions, and complete packages of PII to apply for PPP and EIDL funds.
Cyber threat actors also are leveraging Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks to defraud businesses and redirect small business loan stimulus disbursements to bank accounts belonging to the attackers.”
In addition to this, the speech encouraged financial institutions to include as much SAR information as possible, stating that the more specific one is in describing activity in a SAR, the more useful the information is to law enforcement.
A copy of the entire speech can be found here.