Gambling facilities in Canada and elsewhere are employing AI to combat illicit money exchanges
One of the ongoing battles between governments and criminals is money laundering. This struggle involves authorities implementing new processes, and criminals finding new ways to get around them. Artificial intelligence (AI) might be the future weapon for not only the authorities, but also for other industries, such as casinos that are a usual target for criminals to clean dirty funds to be able to identify events more efficiently. A new report from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, known as Fintrac, is integrating AI in its processes to provide valuable information in the anti-money laundering battle.
Fintrac recognizes that this rapidly evolving technology brings challenges besides all the potential applications, money launderers can also get a hold of this technology. Despite that, Fintrac believes that, with this technology, enforcement agencies can be more efficient and effective, which can identify potential offenders with enough time.
This federal center will be uploading information regarding banks, insurance, companies, securities, dealers, money service, businesses, real state, brokers, casinos and many more. All this information is what the agency review with the help of AI and when there is a case that requires further investigation is sent for review to the respective agency. For instance, in December 2019 Fintrac warned casinos to pay extra attention to those customers that are using bank drafts to pay for their gaming activity. Apparently, this is the latest preferred method for criminals attempting to disguise dirty money.
Casinos have been, for a long time, preferred places for criminals to launder their funds, so they work really close with Canadian authorities. Currently, this federal center receives and stores over 25 million new financial transaction reports each year. This information is then filtered and analyzed so patterns can be identified and connections made in a timely manner. As a result, the hope is that money laundering will become a thing of the past.