Mohanamerry Vedamanikam
Ph.D. Candidate (Psychology), School of Applied Psychology, Social Work and Policy, College of Arts and Sciences, University Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Malaysia
mohanamerry_vedam@ahsgs.uum.edu.my
Article
Technology advancement has taken a new shape in leading the world into digital civilization remarkably in e-commerce, communication, and financial sectors, transcending geographies and enhances speed and efficiency. Sophisticated internet technology presents new opportunities to criminals and the financial crime risk landscape has been continuously taking on increasing complexity and velocity and results in massive financial loss. Illegal funds from the unlawful activities are transformed into legal funds via money laundering, reverted to the criminal, and enters a legitimate economy. Ranging from money laundering, terrorist financing, cybercrimes, fraud, and scams, preventing and detecting suspicious activity has become the greatest challenge for financial players, impacting monetary losses, reputation, and regulatory censure. An online platform has provided an avenue of being anonymous or using fake profiles, giving an advantage to the criminals to attract and attack their victims causing them to lose their hard-earned money and employ characters called money mules to revert the funds to them while being hidden from the enforcement authorities. The growth of financial crime and the increasing sophistication of bad actors across has called for heightened vigilance and comprehensive approach employing innovative technologies to increase the efficiency and effectiveness to deter and detect suspicious activities. Apart from technology, embedding awareness of financial crime becomes a shield preventing victimization by the criminals.
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