The real harm behind financial crime

Following the FIU/ACAMS conference, discussions revealed that many people working in financial crime teams don’t fully appreciate the extent and impact of the problem they’re helping to solve. The level and types of offending were eye-opening to many attendees. Understanding the real-world harm changed their view of the job from a compliance exercise to something with real social benefits, giving them a genuine sense that this is work worth doing.

The cases discussed below were all reported in November 2025. This is a small snapshot of the problem, but it demonstrates the harm that financial crimes cause and what compliance professionals can do to help prevent it. Names have not been included, but the cases are explored in general terms.

Drugs cause direct harm to users, indirect harm to their friends and families, and fund criminal gangs. The scale of the problem is staggering.

In November alone, meth and cocaine with a street value of $220m were intercepted at Auckland airport, with complicit baggage handlers ensuring safe passage. Two women were accused of importing meth worth $33m in their luggage at Melbourne airport. Four drug labs were broken up in simultaneous police raids, with cash and weapons seized.

Meth use has increased significantly this year. Large amounts of money need laundering, and detection work by compliance teams helps identify these activities and reduce the harm drugs cause to communities.

Fraud Awareness Week brought regular stories about fraud across all news outlets. The scale can feel overwhelming, but it’s important to remember that each detection matters. Small-scale activity identified in one business might be the key to unlocking larger, organised operations. Every little adds up to a lot.

In one case, someone paid $250,000 to a company claiming to offer cryptocurrency trading services. Unbeknown to him, the money was transferred to the Middle East, and once money leaves these shores, recovery becomes much harder. A common thread in many stories is people losing all their savings with little hope of seeing them again.

Each victim is someone’s customer at a bank or financial institution. There are measures being put in place to help, and in some cases customers do get reimbursed, but it’s a major problem that potentially affects everyone. The industry needs to get better at preventing fraud.

Modern slavery is a crime in itself and often connects with other forms of crime, such as scam centres.

One trial involved a man who brought people into the country, treated them as if they were his property, raped them, and paid them next to nothing for working long hours. People in these situations feel they have nowhere to turn. They are usually threatened that if they speak up, they will be harmed, their family back home will be harmed, or they will be turned into the authorities as illegal immigrants. In many cases, they have paid someone to get them into the country and provide a job, and now they are in debt to that person with little hope of paying it off.

This is on a much smaller financial scale to the drug trade, but for each person living in these circumstances the impact is devastating. Risk is typically measured as likelihood and impact. Whilst the impact may be low in financial terms, the impact is very high when viewed from the perspective of the person harmed.

Environmental crime ranges from small-scale individuals to organised operations.

In one case, fishermen took significantly more than their allowed quota. The amounts involved are relatively small, but quotas exist for a reason. Over-fishing jeopardises the long-term sustainability of fisheries, affects legal commercial fishing operations, and prevents individual fishermen from feeding their families.

The direct impact is on the fishery, but the indirect impact reaches people whose livelihoods depend on sustainable fishing practices.

These are the kinds of stories the financial crime community is working to stop. By identifying the financial transactions used to perform these types of crime or laundered after the crime, compliance professionals help stop the flow of funds to criminals and reduce their capability to commit the next crime.

Financial institutions should consider how these cases affect their business and what they can do to detect them. The world of fraud and money laundering is constantly evolving, so staying aware of those changes and adapting AML programmes accordingly is essential. Some of the cases discussed, such as modern slavery and environmental crime, don’t tend to be as top of mind as the more major crimes of drugs and fraud and often have lower amounts involved, but they still deserve attention in detection strategies.

This blog is based on the December 2025 episode of ThirdEye View, hosted by Jing Zhang, Business Development Manager, and Colin Dixon, CAMS-certified AML Solutions Specialist at ThirdEye. Colin has been with ThirdEye since its inception in 2012 and works closely with clients to help them maximise their platform capabilities.