123 Red Flags: What the FATF’s New iGaming Paper Means for Online Operators
For seventeen years the FATF’s reference point on gambling was a 2009 study of land-based casinos. On 9 September 2026 it published a replacement: Risks of Gaming and Gambling, with red flag risk indicators, and for the first time it looks hard at online and illegal gambling. If you run an iGaming platform, a sweepstakes […]
£4.7 Million for 970 Payments: What OFSI’s Citibank Penalty Teaches Every Sanctions Programme
A bank with one of the largest sanctions compliance operations in the world has just been penalised for the unglamorous failures: a list that lacked identifiers, accounts that stayed open, alerts closed in error and reports that arrived months late. On 11 August 2026 the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) fined Citibank N.A.’s […]
The Mule Chain Playbook: What the FCA’s Money Mule Review Tells Every Payments Firm
Every fraud has a second act. The scam, the phishing text, the fake investment platform: these get the headlines. But the money has to go somewhere, and that “somewhere” is almost always an ordinary account opened by an ordinary-looking customer. On 23 September 2026 the UK Financial Conduct Authority published a multi-firm review of money […]
The Southwest Border GTO Expires Today — and That Is Exactly When MSB Risk Peaks
FinCEN’s expanded Geographic Targeting Order ran from 7 March to 2 September 2026. The filing obligation stops. The examination exposure does not. Today is the last effective day of FinCEN’s Southwest Border Geographic Targeting Order. The Order, issued on 6 March 2026 and published at 91 FR 11456, required covered money services businesses in Arizona, […]
The Section 311 Revival: Why FinCEN’s Banque Misr UAE Action Is a FinTech Problem Too
On 28 August 2026, FinCEN issued a notice of proposed rulemaking finding that Banque Misr’s operations in the United Arab Emirates are a financial institution of primary money laundering concern, and proposing to cut the institution off from U.S. correspondent banking under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act. Treasury’s supporting statement, issued under Operation […]
Digital Assets Are Now a Sanctionable Sector: OFAC’s Iran Determination and What It Changes
For most of the last decade, sanctions exposure in the digital asset industry was a matching problem. You screened counterparties and wallet addresses against the SDN List, you blocked what hit, you filed the report, and you moved on. On 24 August 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury changed the shape of that problem […]
When ‘Recycled Winnings’ Is Not a Source of Funds: The QuinnBet Settlement and Gaming AML in 2026
On 20 August 2026, the UK Gambling Commission announced that QuinnBet (Gibraltar) Limited will pay £609,104 to settle an enforcement case covering anti-money laundering and social responsibility failures identified between March 2023 and August 2025. The number itself is not what should concern compliance officers. What should concern them is how ordinary the failures were. […]
97% of the Filings, 3% of the Dollars: What FinCEN’s Human Smuggling Analysis Reveals About Your Detection Model
On August 13, 2026, FinCEN published a Financial Trend Analysis that belongs on every BSA officer’s desk this week. Across 67,540 Bank Secrecy Act reports filed between 2023 and 2025, financial institutions flagged approximately $4.9 billion in suspicious activity potentially tied to human smuggling. The headline dollar figure will get the coverage. The far more […]
Recidivism Is the New Red Flag: What FinCEN’s Historic $125M UBS Penalty Means for Every AML Program
On August 3, 2026, FinCEN assessed a $125 million civil money penalty against UBS Financial Services Inc. — the largest BSA penalty ever imposed on a broker-dealer. The headline number will get the attention. The word that should get your attention is the one FinCEN put in the title of its own press release: recidivist. […]
The CTA Rollback Is Final: FinCEN Ends Beneficial Ownership Reporting — and Shifts the Burden Back to You
On August 11, 2026, FinCEN issued a final rule that permanently removes the requirement for U.S. companies and U.S. persons to report beneficial ownership information (BOI) under the Corporate Transparency Act. The rule takes effect upon publication in the Federal Register, and FinCEN confirmed it will go a step further: previously reported information on U.S. […]