On January 9, 2024, FinCEN issued a Financial Trend Analysis on information linked to identity-related suspicious activity in Bank Secrecy Act reports filed from January to December 2021. FinCEN’s analysis found that approximately 1.6 million reports (42% of the reports filed that year) related to identity or $212 billion in suspicious activity.
FinCEN identified at least 14 types of BSA reports commonly associated with identity. The most common reports were fraud, false records, identity theft, third-party money laundering, and circumvention of verification standards. These top five typologies accounted for 88% of identity-related BSA reports In addition, trends were identified in the BSA reporting as follows:
Although identity-related suspicious activity impacted all types of financial institutions, depository institutions filed the most identity-related BSA reports, around 54% of all identity-related filings.
While most financial institutions in the identity-related BSA dataset reported impersonation as their top identity exploitation, money services businesses most often reported circumvention of verification.
The report found that compromised credentials have a disproportionate financial impact as compared to other types of identity exploitation.
Read FinCEN’s press release here.
The full report can be found here.