Fraud and Financial Crime

Algeria's trade ministry says a digital platform with what it calls "AI functionality" caught three different kinds of import fraud in one week. What's actually behind that label is unclear: the government hasn't named a vendor or said whether this is genuine machine-learning analysis or standard data-matching software wearing an AI label.

Last week a bank picked up the phone and found the trades weren't real. This week a regulator found the advisers weren't real either.

Radiant World is one of the world's largest iron-ore traders. A major Italian bank financed its trades for years. Then the bank called the company those invoices said it was trading with, and got a very different answer.

For three years, a woman in Arizona kept company laptops running in her spare bedroom for North Korean operators she'd never met. Three hundred and nine US companies hired the people on the other end. None of them noticed.

Tariffs on imported goods are higher this year than they've been in decades, which makes it more valuable than ever for a company to fudge where a product actually came from, since the tariff rate usually depends on that answer. DOJ's response to that problem isn't new or hypothetical: a joint DOJ–Homeland Security task force built for exactly this, the Trade Fraud Task Force, has already recovered more than $1 billion in penalties, forfeitures, and charged losses since it launched in August 2025.

Going after the marketplace instead of the seller is not new. The government shut down Silk Road and prosecuted its operator; it seized Backpage and charged the people who ran it. The lesson from Alibaba's $600 million settlement on July 1 is that the same theory now reaches a legitimate business, not just a criminal one.

For years the comfortable assumption in due diligence was simple: an EU passport meant a vetted person, and a Cyprus company meant a regulated one. It turns out the people running the vetting were the ones selling the way around it.

Sanctions were designed to be precise. Target an individual, a company, or a government, freeze them out of the financial system, and leave everyone else's business alone. An investigation published June 17 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project shows how thoroughly that precision has been defeated.

The FIFA World Cup kicks off June 11, with matches across 11 US cities and additional venues in Mexico and Canada. The fraud is not coming with it. It is already here. More than 4,300 fraudulent domains spoofing FIFA ticketing, hotels, and merchandise are already live. Banking malware is being distributed through pirate streaming apps promising free match access. A Chinese-speaking threat group tracked as Ghost Stadium has been identified running credential-harvesting campaigns against tournament infrastructure. The FBI issued a public service announcement on May 27 warning of spoofed FIFA websites. Recorded Future published a threat assessment flagging state-sponsored espionage targeting executives at matches and influence operations using the event as a platform.

For years, companies importing goods from China have used a simple workaround to avoid the tariffs designed to stop foreign manufacturers from undercutting American competitors by selling below cost. Ship the product to a third country like Vietnam, Malaysia, or Mexico. Relabel it. Import it into the US under the new country of origin. The duties that were designed to protect American manufacturers never get paid. The practice is so widespread that trade lawyers have a name for it: transshipment.

The FBI issued a public service announcement on April 30 warning that cybercriminals are stealing physical cargo by impersonating legitimate trucking companies on digital load boards (online platforms where shippers post freight and carriers bid on it). Losses hit nearly $725 million in 2025, up 60 percent from the prior year. The average theft is now worth nearly $274,000.

A CEO who signs a SOX certification (the annual sworn statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission that a company's internal controls work) is personally liable if the controls it vouches for don't exist. At Super Micro, a co-founder routed $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia AI servers through shell companies in Malaysia and Singapore to Chinese buyers between 2024 and 2025. Dummy boxes sat in Malaysian warehouses to fool compliance checks while the real hardware shipped. The DOJ unsealed the indictment March 19. Super Micro's stock dropped 33 percent, erasing roughly $6 billion in market cap.

The Eastern District of New York unsealed a ten-count indictment Thursday against the former CEO and CFO of iLearningEngines. The charge sheet alleges they fabricated "virtually all" of the company's customer relationships and revenue over multiple years. Specific charges include Continuing Financial Crimes Enterprise, securities fraud, and wire fraud.

The DOJ created the National Fraud Enforcement Division on April 7. Eleven days later, NFED published its first weekly enforcement tally. $340 million in fraud actions across seven days. COVID relief fraud in Kentucky, Indiana, and Colorado. An $11.4 million Medicare fraud case in Florida. Oregon pandemic unemployment-insurance fraud. New Mexico identity theft. Individual sentences ran from twenty-eight months to nine years.

Fleet-management firm Geotab published its 2025 cargo-theft report in March. North American cargo theft hit $6.6 billion last year. Incidents rose 18 percent year over year. The average theft value climbed 36 percent to roughly $274,000 per event. Strategic theft (fraud, identity theft, falsified paperwork) is displacing traditional smash-and-grab crews. Geotab surveys show about a quarter of fleet professionals now cite strategic theft as their top threat.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president authority to impose tariffs. The decision invalidated every IEEPA tariff collected since 2025. Estimated refunds owed to importers: $175 billion, with interest accruing at $650 million per month.

Global losses from financial fraud hit $442 billion in 2025, according to INTERPOL's March threat assessment. Behind that number is an industrial operation. Criminal syndicates across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America run fraud compounds housing hundreds of thousands of people trafficked from nearly 80 nationalities. Passports confiscated. Fourteen-hour days running pig butchering schemes (long-con investment fraud where victims are groomed over weeks), romance scams, and business email compromise campaigns. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates more than 220,000 people are held in scam compounds across Myanmar and Cambodia. INTERPOL found that AI-enhanced fraud is now 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods.

On March 19, Bloomberg reported that North Korea's foreign exchange earnings have reached their highest level since before the 2018 round of United Nations sanctions that were supposed to choke off the regime's revenue. The sanctions are still in place. Not working, but in place.

North Korea stole $2 billion in crypto with 74% fewer attacks. That got the headlines. What didn't: nearly every Fortune 500 CISO admits to unknowingly hiring at least one North Korean IT worker.

They're not making fake LinkedIn profiles anymore. They're becoming real people.