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🎧 Check Out Our New Podcast Episode Drop!

We’re excited to feature Erin West, a leading expert on the global Pig Butchering crisis, in the latest episode of Designated with Yaya Jata Fanusie. Watch or Listen to uncover the truth behind this devastating scheme, the criminals behind it, the crypto connection, and the worldwide victims caught in its wake.

🌎 Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers grows despite western sanctions.  Poorly maintained and uninsured vessels transport up to 70% of country’s seaborne oil. Guardian

🌎 EU includes Iran Air in sanctions over missile transfer to Russia Reuters

🎙Meet Erin West: New Episode of Designated with Yaya Jata Fanusie Features Counter-Pig Butchering Paragon to Discuss the Scam’s Deep Roots, Terrible Consequences Illicit Edge 

🌎 Hezbollah running out of money amid Israeli bombardment.  The group’s cash sources include Lebanon’s insolvent but licensed commercial banks and arrivals of cash-bearing planes. VOA 

💥 UN peacekeeping troops failing Israel as Hezbollah creates terror tunnels right under their noses NYP 

🌎 Inside America’s Fastest-Growing Criminal Enterprise.  House of Hope residents often come branded or tattooed by the cartels and gangs who trafficked them. Free Press

🌎 Kamala Harris accused of plagiarizing passages in co-authored 2009 book.  The vice president appears to have airlifted sections of her book, Smart on Crime. CNN

🌎 Crypto Company Tether Talking to Commodity Traders About Lending Them Its Billions.  Two top Russian metals producers have turned to the stablecoin to settle cross border transactions. Bloomberg 

🌎 He Was a Monk, Then a Billionaire and Now an Alleged Tax Cheat.  Michigan philanthropist Manoj Bhargava made a fortune on his path to enlightenment. WSJ

🌎 Inside the Carjacking Crisis.  In October of last year, three masked men carjacked Henry Cuellar, a congressman from Texas. Atlantic 

🌎 Scale of Chinese Spying Overwhelms Western Governments.  Fears of escalation as China’s intelligence-gathering operation looks to consolidate Xi Jinping’s grip on power. WSJ

🚩 U.S. Weighs Capping Exports of AI Chips From Nvidia and AMD to Some Countries Bloomberg

🌎 NY Congressional Candidate, Running on a Plan To Combat Campus Anti-Semitism, Took Max Donation From Nonprofit Leader Bankrolling Pro-Hamas Protests Free Beacon

📕 Propaganda, Procurement and Lethal Operations: Iran’s Activities Inside America GW Program on Extremism

RUSSIA

🇷🇺 Russia seeks over $1 billion in damages from Shell Reuters

🇷🇺 India is now Russia’s No. 2 supplier of restricted technology Fortune

🇷🇺 UK-linked firms suspected of busting Russia sanctions BBC

🇷🇺 Russia’s illicit Starlink terminals help power its advance in Ukraine WaPo

CHINA

🇨🇳 Meet the Chinese ‘Typhoon’ hackers preparing for war TechCrunch

🇨🇳 IBM Investigates Allegations of Executive Misconduct in China Bloomberg

🇨🇳 Mexico must stop itself from becoming China’s Trojan Horse Hill

🇨🇳 China is quietly extracting itself from a US helium ‘stranglehold’ SCMP

CORRUPTION & FINANCIAL CRIME

💸 Key to Citi’s regulatory woes – staff need skills ‘enhancement’ Reuters

💸 Canada expels Indian diplomats after tying government agents to ‘serious criminal activity’ CNN

💸 Nigerian airline CEO faces new US charge in $20M fraud case Semafor

💸 ECB challenges Serbian bank’s takeover bid over money laundering concerns FT

💸 Greece arrests Israeli billionaire on Romanian corruption charges Politico

CRYPTO & CYBER

🔐 MrBeast allegedly reaped $10M promoting and dumping altcoins Cointelegraph

🔐 Hong Kong Crypto Swindler Tied to Singapore Money Laundering Syndicate OCCRP

🔐 Mysterious Hacking Group Has 2 New Tools to Steal Data From Air-Gapped Machines Wired

🔐 National Public Data, the hacked data broker that lost millions in personal data, files for bankruptcy TechCrunch

🔐 Man Who Accidentally Sent $527M in Bitcoins to Dump Sues Local Council to Retrieve Them CoinDesk

🔐 Pokémon developer faces major data leak Verge

🔐 Cisco investigates breach after stolen data for sale on hacking forum Bleepingcomputer

TRAFFICKING

🚚 Here’s how much each NY state resident will have to fork over in taxes to cover migrant crisis bill NYP

🚚 Drug dealer jailed for three years after threatening to ‘flood the Valleys’ with cannabis owned £190,000 collection of Banksy artworks Daily Mail

🚚 Ex-DEA Agent Busted for Protecting Drug Dealers He Knew as Kids VICE

RESEARCH AND MULTIMEDIA

📘 Ecuador’s Risky War on Narcos New Yorker 

📘 New $72K Migrant Smuggling Routes to the U.S. Start With Charter Flights Reuters

📘 Money Laundering National Risk Assessment Singapore MAS

📘 A better anti-corruption machine Brookings

📘 Ransomware Victim Insights RUSI

📘 Standards and interoperability: The future of the global financial system Atlantic Council

📘 U.S. Foreign Extortion Prevention Act: New Tool in the Fight Against Global Corruption TI 

📘 How We Uncovered the Modus Operandi of Criminals Smuggling Illegal Gold out of Venezuela Pulitzer Center

📘 Illicit Drugs Are Undermining Pacific Security USIP

 


ILLICIT EDGE INSIGHTS

📌 China’s Oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang

📌 How Are U.S. Financial Sanctions Developed?

📌 Top 10 Ways Iran Supports and Empowers Hamas

📌 Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program: A Dangerous Evolution

📌 Top 10 Ways Money Launderers Are Caught Red-Handed 

📌 What are the Top 10 Books on Corruption, Kleptocracy, and Illicit Financing?

📌 What Are 10 Ways China Is Stealing Intellectual Property?

📌 These are Mexico’s Most Powerful Drug Cartels

📌 The Hypocrisy of Labeling Terrorists as ‘Militants’

📌 Sanctions and the IRGC: How Iran’s Paramilitary Group Profits from Economic Hardship

📌 What are the Arguments For and Against ESG?

 


VIDEOS

 


INFLUENCERS

Kim Zetter / Brian Krebs / Nicole Perlroth /
Josh Rogin / Ellen Nakashima / Matt Levitt /
Clarissa Ward / Gary Kasparov / Joseph Cox / Mark Dubowitz
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya / Bill Browder / Jen Easterly /
Zack Kopplin / Laura Shin / Dmitri Alperovitch / Tom Keatinge
Catherine Belton / Nazanin Boniadi / Chris Krebs /
Kevin Hall / Farnaz Fassihi / Kevin Collier / Patrick Howell O’Neill /
Michael McFaul / Jonathan Schanzer / Catalin Cimpanu /
Liza Lin / Enes Kanter FREEDOM / Bianna Golodryga

 


RESOURCES

Financial Action Task Force /
Egmont Group /
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project /
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists /
Money Laundering Watch/

C4ADS /
Combating Terrorism Center /
Royal United Services Institute /

 


PODCASTS

🎙️ Conversation with an Exiled Venezuelan Opposition Leader Lawfare

🎙️ Hezbollah’s Secret Missile Cities, Russia Advances In Ukraine, & Hamas Chief Fears For Life President’s Daily Brief

🎙️ Fox News, defamation, and our new information reality Click Here

🎙️ Deep Cover: George Santos Pushkin

🎙️ Conversation with Former FATF President RUSI

🎙 ️The problem with the Nigerian economy has nothing to do with crypto Click Here

🎙 ️Crypto ATMs, a Senator Convicted, AUSTRAC Report, Timeshare Fraud, etc. AML Conversations

🎙 ️Sanctions and Russia’s Nuclear Diplomacy RUSI

🎙 ️Partnering with terrorists to fight terrorists Generation Jihad 

🎙 ️Allen Stanford: The Lord of the Lies Scamfluencers

 


IN OTHER NEWS

🌎 How Iran Uses Criminal Gangs in the West to Target Its Enemies.  After setbacks in Lebanon and Gaza, Tehran is finding new ways to go after Israeli interests. WSJ 

🌎 Ozempic underworld: Inside the black market of obesity drugs.  Investigation reveals an international illegal marketplace where criminals alter the drugs or ship the real product overseas. CNBC

🌎 Cyprus arrests eight on suspicion of terrorism funding.  Eight Syrians were arrested in morning raids by police in the towns of Limassol and Paphos. Reuters

🌎 69,000 Bitcoins Are Headed for the U.S. Treasury – While the Agent Who Seized Them Is in Jail.  The former IRS agent who seized the recording-breaking sum languishes in a Nigerian jail cell. Wired

🔥 Bring Tigran Home: An American Unjustly Detained in Nigeria (Part 1) (Part 2)

 

🌎 TD Bank Agrees to $3B in Penalties U.S. Settlement.  Canadian bank’s U.S. unit pleaded guilty to charges that it failed to build proper AML systems. WSJ 

🚩 U.S. regulators impose penalties to resolve money laundering probes Reuters

🌎 Afghan national charged with planning Election Day attack worked for CIA in Afghanistan.  Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, who was arrested Monday in Oklahoma City, is accused of planning the attack on behalf of ISIS. CBS

🌎 EU countries greenlight €35 billion loan for Ukraine using Russia’s frozen assets.  Under the G7 plan, the windfall profits earned by Russia’s frozen assets will be used to gradually repay a multi-billion loan for Ukraine. Euro News

🇷🇺 Companies sell their businesses in Russia Reuters 

🇷🇺 Russia calls on BRICS partners to create alternative to IMF Reuters

🌎 Hackers Claim ‘Catastrophic’ Internet Archive Attack.  Aroup linked to a pro-Palestinian hacktivist movement has launched a catastrophic cyberattack revealing the details of 31 million people. Newsweek

🚩 BIS Issues Guidance for Compliance with the Export Administration Regulations U.S. Commerce Dept

RUSSIA

🇷🇺 Republican Senate candidate’s hedge fund managed $415M in Russian debt Guardian

🇷🇺 Two Russian Nationals Charged For Operating Illicit Procurement Network DOJ

🇷🇺 Britain bolsters sanctions regime on Russia with new trade unit Reuters

 

CHINA

🇨🇳 How China is using antisemitic conspiracies to influence down-ballot races WaPo

🇨🇳 China slaps sanctions on 3 US firms, 10 senior execs over Taiwan weapons Reuters

🇨🇳 China’s Chery assembles cars in Russian plants vacated by Western rivals Reuters

CORRUPTION & FINANCIAL CRIME

💸 Report: DEI Is Transforming the National Science Foundation Free Press

💸 Fake Jet-Engine Parts Case Prompts Call for Supply Chain Reforms Bloomberg

💸 Ecuador ex-president Rafael Correa and deputy banned from entering US over corruption cases El Pais

CRYPTO & CYBER

🔐 The FBI created its own crypto token called ‘NexFundAI’ to take down market manipulators Fortune

🔐 N. Korean Hackers Use Fake Interviews to Infect Developers with Cross-Platform Malware Hacker News

🔐 OpenAI Blocks 20 Global Malicious Campaigns Using AI for Cybercrime and Disinformation Hacker News

 


COMPLIANCE TOOLBOX

🔑 Cryptocurrency Regulation Tracker Atlantic Council

🔑 COMTRADE: Using Trade Data to Uncover Fraud and Smuggling OCCRP

🔑 2022 Rule of Law Index World Justice Project

🔑 Global Organized Crime Index Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

🔑 Anti-Corruption Helpdesk Transparency International

🔑 Flight Intelligence for Investigators Icarus Flights, C4ADS

🔑 Global Legislative Map: Violent Extremist and Terrorist-Related Online Content Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism

🔑 Basel AML Index Map Basel Institute on Governance

🔑 Scorched Earth: Using NASA Fire Data to Monitor War Zones Bellingcat

Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)

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Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)

State Department

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Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

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Federal Reserve

Department of Justice

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Commerce Department

Securities and Exchange Commission

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Federal Bureau of Investigation

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Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Federal Trade Commission

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HM Treasury

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Interpol

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GET THE EDGE IN YOUR INBOX

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RUSSIA

IRAN

MEXICO

TURKEY

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IRAQ

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NORTH KOREA

INDIA

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CUBA

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