Shutting Down the Laudromat: An Interview with an AML Superhero

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

James D. Ratley, CFE
ACFE President

Successful criminals often have a common problem. After they steal the cash, they can’t spend it. They must first wash it.

They search for discreet laundromats. But financial institutions — spurred by federal laws, loss of reputation and a heightened sense of ethics — are cracking down on crooks who want to make their cash squeaky clean.

Jennifer Shasky Calvery has been fighting money laundering and other crimes for years — first at the U.S. federal government and now as the Global Head of Financial Crime Threat Mitigation at HSBC Bank. Before joining HSBC in 2016, she was director of the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) for four years after a 15-year career at the U.S. Department of Justice. She’ll be receiving the ACFE Cressey Award at the 28th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference.

“While I was at the Treasury Department, FinCEN analysts made major strides to enhance deployment of advanced analytics tools to make sense of the ocean-sized data they had at their disposal from SAR [Suspicious Activity Report] filings and other sources of information,” Calvery says in the cover article of the May/June issue of Fraud Magazine. “These tools were essential to FinCEN’s ability to mine data and spot trends, and I knew that I would also need to leverage these tools at an international bank like HSBC.”

Calvery believes that fraud fighters should seize the opportunity to strengthen money laundering information sharing between the public and private sectors.

However, she says that banks are constrained by what they can share with industry peers and to governments. And banks and governments are restricted in what they can exchange cross-border. Regardless, Calvery can act as a mediator among the players because of her anti-money laundering credentials.

“In my role ... at HSBC, I’m focused on deploying innovative solutions that increase the effectiveness and efficiency of our ability to detect, deter and combat financial crime,” says Calvery. “In jurisdictions around the world, governments are adopting ‘sandbox approaches,’ allowing industry latitude to be creative in finding internal solutions to address risks in a way that encourages innovation while providing appropriate safeguards.”

More power to Jennifer Shasky Calvery. I’m looking forward to hearing her keynote at the 28th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference, June 18-23 in Nashville. See you there!