Awesome Financial Crime

A curated list of Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) resources: transaction monitoring, trade surveillance, e-comms surveillance, fraud detection, case management, sanctions screening, KYC/KYB, graph analytics, datasets, regulations and more.

Financial crime spans AML/CFT, sanctions, AB&C, market abuse, fraud and investigative tooling. This list aims to be practical, vendor-neutral and signal-rich.

Table of Contents

• Vendor / Commercial Platforms
• Transaction Monitoring (AML)
• Trade Surveillance (Market Abuse)
• E-Comms / Conduct Surveillance
• Fraud Detection
• Sanctions & Screening
• KYC / KYB / Customer Risk
• Case Management & Investigation
• Graph & Link Analysis
• Graph Machine Learning
• Entity Resolution & Master Data
• Data Ingestion, ETL & Quality
• Synthetic Data & Simulators
• MLOps, Monitoring & Drift Detection
• Feature Engineering & Feature Store
• Explainability & Model Risk
• Benchmarks & Datasets
• Certifications
• Courses & Training
• Books
• Podcasts
• Documentaries, Movies & TV Series
• Typologies
• Regulations, Standards & Guidance

Vendor / Commercial Platforms

Commercial tools are useful for discovery:

• Oracle Financial Crime and Compliance Management (FCCM) Solutions - Enterprise AML transaction monitoring/Mantas & case mgmt.

• NICE Actimize - Cross-domain FCC suite (AML, fraud, trade/e-comms).

• SAS AML / Fraud - Analytics-driven FCC platform.

• SymphonyAI NetReveal - AML, fraud and KYC risk.

• Quantexa - Entity resolution & network analytics.

• Featurespace - Adaptive behavioral fraud analytics.

• Behavox / Shield / Smarsh - E-comms surveillance stacks.

• Solidus / ACA / QuestDB - Trade surveillance.

• Elliptic - Wallet & transaction screening for AML compliance.

• AI DECISIONS - Multi-chain wallet screening API (Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, Base, Arbitrum, Gnosis): sanctions, mixer exposure, risk tier; free tier and a free public checker.

• FreezeRadar - Wallet risk checker for freezeable assets (USDT/USDC/PAXG issuer blacklist, sanctions exposure, live freeze/release activity).

• SanctionsKit - Sanctions screening API and review dashboard for checking people and companies, with source-linked results. Free synthetic sandbox; paid production screening.

• CPT Engineering Company Due Diligence Check - Pay-per-check US company screen: state registry match and status (CO, CT, NY, OR, PA, TX), active UCC and government liens (CO, CT, OR), OFAC SDN/consolidated and SAM.gov exclusion screens; no personal data returned.

• HullCipher - Sanctioned ships on a live map: what each list calls a ship beside what it broadcasts on AIS, with dated name, MMSI and flag changes, silences, restricted port calls and meetings at sea. Free to browse; paid plans from $50/month.

Transaction Monitoring (AML)

• Apache Flink - Streaming engine for real-time TM pipelines.

• Drools - Business rules engine suitable for deterministic AML transaction-monitoring scenarios and rule-based alerting.

• Apache Kafka - Event streaming platform for high-volume transaction ingestion and near-real-time monitoring pipelines.

• Apache Spark - Distributed processing framework for large-scale transaction monitoring, feature engineering and batch detection.

Trade Surveillance (Market Abuse)

• TimescaleDB - Time-series SQL for order book analytics.

• QuestDB - High-performance time-series database suitable for market data, order-book and surveillance analytics.

• Apache Kafka - Streaming infrastructure for market-data and order-event ingestion.

• Polars - High-performance dataframe library useful for large-scale order and trade surveillance analytics.

E-Comms / Conduct Surveillance

• spaCy / Hugging Face - NLP pipelines for policy violations, collusion cues.

Fraud Detection

• PyOD - Outlier detection toolbox for fraud features.

• River - Online ML for streaming fraud detection.

• XGBoost / LightGBM - Gradient boosting baselines for tabular fraud.

Sanctions & Screening

• OpenSanctions - Sanctions & PEPs knowledge graph + entity data pipelines.

• FuzzyWuzzy / RapidFuzz - Name-matching baseline.

• OFAC SDN & Consolidated Lists - Official lists + update cadence, formats.

KYC / KYB / Customer Risk

• Great Expectations - Data quality gates for KYC feeds.

• OpenSanctions - Open-source sanctions, PEP and entity data useful for customer screening and risk assessment.

• Splink - Probabilistic entity resolution for customer deduplication and identity matching.

• RapidFuzz - Fast fuzzy string matching useful for names, aliases and customer-record comparison.

• china-usci - Offline checks of mainland China's 18-character USCI format, allowed characters and check digit; passing does not verify registration, creditworthiness or payment safety.

Case Management & Investigation

• Kibana/Elasticsearch - Query, pivot and visualize alert context.

• OpenSearch - Elastic alternative for investigations.

• Apache Superset - Investigation dashboards.

Graph & Link Analysis

• NetworkX - Graph feature engineering (centrality, motifs).

• Neo4j - Labeled-property graph DB for rings & money-mules.

• Memgraph - Real-time graph with Cypher for streaming rings.

• Graphistry - GPU visual analytics on alert clusters.

Graph Machine Learning

• PyTorch Geometric - Graph neural networks for AML/fraud rings.

• DGL (Deep Graph Library) - Scalable graph learning.

• openheads - Training code for a GNN financial-crime detector over a multi-chain transaction graph (warm-start recipe, threshold calibration).

Entity Resolution & Master Data

• Splink - Probabilistic entity resolution at scale.

• Dedupe - Python entity resolution library.

• FollowTheMoney - Entity data model and processing toolkit for financial crime investigations and investigative data.

Data Ingestion, ETL & Quality

• Airflow - Batch orchestration for financial crime pipelines.

• Soda - Data quality testing and monitoring.

• Pandera - Data validation for pandas pipelines.

Synthetic Data & Simulators

• SDV (Synthetic Data Vault) - Tabular synthetic data generation for model dev.

• Gretel / YData - Tools to generate privacy-preserving financial crime datasets.

• Financial-Crime-Synthetic-Data - Reproducible synthetic financial crime data generator for transaction monitoring - customers, accounts, transactions and alerts, ready for analytics and model testing.

• Faker - Synthetic customer/KYC generation.

• Mimesis - Synthetic profile generation.

• openabm - Agent-based simulator of money-laundering networks with a pluggable detector for adversarial evaluation.

MLOps, Monitoring & Drift Detection

• MLflow - Model tracking, registry, experiment mgmt for financial crime models.

• Evidently AI - Data drift, concept drift, monitoring.

• WhyLabs / whylogs - Data quality & model monitoring.

Feature Engineering & Feature Store

• Featuretools - Automated feature engineering.

• Feast - Feature store for reusable financial crime features.

Explainability & Model Risk

• SHAP - Local/global explanations for financial crime models.

• LIME - Local explainability for suspicious activity scoring.

• Fairlearn - Bias/fairness monitoring.

• DoWhy - Causal inference, counterfactual analysis and root-cause attribution for interpretable ML workflows.

• explainX - Explainability toolkit for inspecting predictions, bias and counterfactual changes in black-box ML models.

Benchmarks & Datasets

• IEEE-CIS Fraud - Financial transactions fraud dataset (imbalanced).

• Elliptic Bitcoin AML - Crypto AML labels for addresses/tx.

• PaySim - Mobile money fraud simulation dataset.

• IBM AML Simulated Transactions Dataset.

• Kaggle Credit Card Fraud Detection.

• openlabels / openeval - Primary-source crypto address label tooling (OFAC SDN, 9 VASP registers, TagPack export) and an evaluation harness with lead-time replay against public designations.

Certifications

AML / Financial Crime

• ACAMS CAMS - Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist

• ICA Advanced Certificate in Anti Money Laundering

• ICA Diploma in Financial Crime Prevention

Fraud

• Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE)

Sanctions

• Association of Certified Sanctions Specialists (ACSS)

• Certified Global Sanctions Specialist (CGSS)

Audit & Risk

• Certified Internal Auditor (CIA)

• Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)

• Financial Risk Manager (FRM)

Courses & Training

Selected practical and professional learning resources covering AML, financial investigations, sanctions, compliance and financial crime prevention.

• Basel LEARN - Free self-paced courses covering financial investigations, money laundering, asset tracing, OSINT, financial analysis and terrorist financing.

• ACAMS AML Foundations - Foundation-level training covering AML principles, risk-based approaches, due diligence and suspicious activity reporting.

• ACAMS AML Regulatory Framework Courses - Self-paced jurisdiction-specific training covering AML regulatory frameworks across the EU, US, UK and other jurisdictions.

• ACAMS Training Webinars - Expert-led training covering financial crime trends, typologies, fraud, sanctions, regulation and practical AFC controls.

• CryptoStrapon Scam Investigations - Free library of 53 documented crypto scam case studies (pig butchering, wallet drainers, rug pulls, fake exchanges) with on-chain evidence and red flags, in English and Spanish.

Books

Financial Crime & AML

• The Laundrymen: Inside Money Laundering, the World's Third Largest Business

  • Jeffrey Robinson

• Money Laundering: A Guide for Criminal Investigators

  • John Madinger

• Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism

  • Louise I. Shelley

• The World's Banker

  • Sebastian Mallaby

Fraud

• Fraud Analytics Using Descriptive, Predictive and Social Network Techniques

  • Bart Baesens

• Financial Shenanigans

  • Howard Schilit, Jeremy Perler, Yoni Engelhart

Anti-Bribery & Corruption

• The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in a New Era
  • Mike Koehler

Sanctions & Compliance

• Economic Sanctions: Theory and Practice
  • Michael P. Malloy

Investigations & Financial Intelligence

• Financial Investigation and Forensic Accounting

  • George A. Manning

• Forensic Analytics: Methods and Techniques for Forensic Accounting Investigations

  • Mark J. Nigrini

Network & Criminal Organizations

• Dark Commerce: How a New Illicit Economy Is Threatening Our Future
  • Louise I. Shelley

Podcasts

Selected podcasts covering financial crime, AML, fraud, sanctions, corruption, investigations and regulatory developments.

• Financial Crime Matters - ACAMS podcast featuring practitioners, regulators and investigators discussing AML, financial crime enforcement and emerging risks.

• The Dark Money Files - Financial crime podcast exploring money laundering, banking, regulation and the criminal abuse of the financial system.

• Bribe, Swindle or Steal - TRACE podcast covering corruption, fraud, money laundering, sanctions and white-collar crime through expert interviews.

• The Laundry - Podcast connecting AML, compliance, sanctions and financial crime with current events, regulation and industry practice.

Documentaries, Movies & TV Series

Selected films, documentaries and series illustrating financial crime, fraud, corruption, market abuse, money laundering and investigative themes.

Documentaries

• Dirty Money - Corporate fraud, corruption, financial misconduct and regulatory failures.
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - Accounting fraud, corporate governance failures and financial deception.
• The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley - Corporate fraud, misrepresentation and governance failures surrounding Theranos.
• The Tinder Swindler - Romance fraud, social engineering and movement of victim funds.
• The Panama Papers - Offshore structures, shell companies, beneficial ownership and financial secrecy.

Movies

• The Wolf of Wall Street - Securities fraud, market misconduct, financial crime and money laundering.
• The Big Short - Financial markets, conflicts of interest, misaligned incentives and systemic risk.
• Margin Call - Market risk, governance, conduct and decision-making during a financial crisis.
• The Laundromat - Offshore finance, shell companies, beneficial ownership and financial secrecy.
• Boiler Room - Securities fraud, high-pressure sales practices and market manipulation.

TV Series

• Ozark - Money laundering, cash businesses, layering and organized crime.
• Breaking Bad - Laundering criminal proceeds through legitimate and cash-intensive businesses.
• Better Call Saul - Money laundering, front businesses organized crime and professional facilitation.
• Billions - Insider trading, market abuse, conflicts of interest and financial investigations.
• McMafia - Cross-border organized crime, money laundering, corruption and illicit financial networks.

Typologies

Common financial crime and misconduct typologies relevant to detection, monitoring, investigation and risk assessment.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

• Structuring / Smurfing - Breaking large transactions into smaller amounts to avoid reporting or monitoring thresholds.
• Money Mule Activity - Using individuals or accounts to receive, transfer or withdraw illicit funds on behalf of criminals.
• Funnel Accounts - Multiple geographically dispersed deposits followed by rapid withdrawal or transfer of funds elsewhere.
• Pass-Through Accounts - Accounts showing substantial incoming and outgoing activity while maintaining unusually low balances.
• Round Tripping - Funds transferred through multiple entities or jurisdictions before returning to their origin, obscuring ownership or source.
• Shell Company Abuse - Using entities with little or no genuine business activity to disguise ownership, transactions or movement of funds.
• Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML) - Manipulating trade transactions, invoices, quantities, prices or documentation to transfer value.
• Cash-Intensive Business Abuse - Mixing illicit proceeds with apparently legitimate cash revenues.
• Dormant Account Reactivation - Previously inactive accounts suddenly exhibiting significant or unusual transaction activity.
• Rapid Movement of Funds - Funds entering an account and being transferred onward shortly afterwards with limited economic rationale.
• Layering Through Multiple Accounts - Moving funds through chains of accounts, entities, products or jurisdictions to obscure their origin.
• Money Laundering Through Virtual Assets - Using cryptoassets, exchanges, mixers, bridges or multiple wallets to obscure transaction trails.

Fraud

• Account Takeover (ATO) - Unauthorized control of an existing account using compromised credentials or social engineering.
• Authorized Push Payment (APP) Fraud - Manipulating victims into authorizing payments to accounts controlled by fraudsters.
• Synthetic Identity Fraud - Combining real and fabricated identity information to create apparently legitimate customers.
• First-Party Fraud - Customers intentionally misrepresenting information or disputing legitimate transactions for financial gain.
• Identity Theft - Using another person's identity or credentials to obtain funds, credit, goods or services.
• Card-Not-Present Fraud - Fraudulent transactions conducted without physical presentation of the payment card.
• Invoice / Payment Diversion Fraud - Manipulating invoices or payment instructions so legitimate payments are redirected.
• Romance and Investment Scams - Building trust with victims before inducing payments or fraudulent investments.
• Merchant Fraud - Abuse involving fraudulent merchants, transaction laundering, collusion or deceptive commercial activity.
• Bust-Out Fraud - Establishing apparently legitimate credit behavior before rapidly maximizing available credit and abandoning repayment obligations.

Anti-Bribery & Corruption (AB&C)

• Kickbacks - Returning part of a payment or contract value to an individual who influenced the underlying decision.
• Bribery Through Intermediaries - Using agents, consultants, distributors or other third parties to conceal improper payments.
• Improper Gifts & Hospitality - Providing excessive gifts, travel, entertainment or hospitality to improperly influence decisions.
• Procurement Corruption - Manipulating tendering, vendor selection, pricing or contracting processes for improper benefit.
• Conflict of Interest - Undisclosed personal or financial interests influencing professional or commercial decisions.
• Fictitious Vendors - Creating or using false suppliers to divert corporate or public funds.
• Charitable Donation Abuse - Using donations or sponsorships as indirect mechanisms for transferring improper benefits.
• Facilitation Payments - Payments intended to expedite routine governmental or administrative actions.
• Political Contribution Abuse - Using political donations or related payments to obtain improper business or regulatory advantages.

Trade Surveillance / Market Abuse

• Insider Dealing - Trading or encouraging trading while possessing material non-public information.
• Spoofing - Placing orders without genuine execution intent to create a misleading impression of supply or demand.
• Layering - Placing multiple non-bona-fide orders at different price levels to influence market perception or execution.
• Wash Trading - Trading without meaningful change in beneficial ownership to create artificial activity or volume.
• Pump and Dump - Artificially promoting or inflating an asset's price before selling accumulated positions.
• Marking the Close - Trading near market close to influence closing prices or valuation benchmarks.
• Front Running - Trading ahead of known client or institutional orders to benefit from the expected price movement.
• Cross-Market Manipulation - Using activity in one instrument, venue or market to manipulate the price of another.
• Collusive Trading - Coordinated trading between participants intended to manipulate price, volume, liquidity or market perception.
• Benchmark Manipulation - Attempting to influence prices, submissions or transactions used to calculate financial benchmarks.

E-Comms / Conduct Surveillance

• Collusion Indicators - Communications suggesting coordination between employees, traders, counterparties or competitors.
• Information Leakage - Unauthorized disclosure of confidential, client, transaction or material non-public information.
• Off-Channel Communications - Conducting business through unapproved messaging platforms, personal devices or communication channels.
• Code Words / Euphemisms - Using disguised language intended to conceal potentially improper conduct.
• Pressure or Coercion - Communications indicating attempts to improperly influence colleagues, clients, counterparties or decision-makers.
• Intent to Circumvent Controls - Discussions about avoiding surveillance, approvals, reporting requirements or internal controls.
• Inappropriate Information Sharing - Sharing restricted information across information barriers or with unauthorized recipients.
• Communication-Trading Correlation - Suspicious communications occurring shortly before or during potentially abusive trading activity.

Sanctions Evasion

• Intermediary / Front Company Use - Routing transactions through third parties or companies to conceal involvement of sanctioned parties.
• Ownership and Control Obfuscation - Using complex ownership structures to hide sanctioned beneficial owners or controllers.
• Payment Routing Through Third Countries - Routing payments through jurisdictions or institutions intended to obscure sanctioned exposure.
• Vessel Identity Manipulation - Changing vessel names, flags, ownership, registration or identification information.
• AIS Manipulation / Dark Activity - Disabling or manipulating vessel tracking systems to conceal movements or transfers.
• Transshipment and Origin Concealment - Moving goods through intermediary jurisdictions to disguise their true origin or destination.
• Invoice and Documentation Manipulation - Altering trade documentation to hide sanctioned goods, entities, jurisdictions or counterparties.
• Virtual Asset Sanctions Evasion - Using cryptoassets, multiple wallets, mixers or decentralized services to circumvent restrictions.

KYC / Customer Risk

• Beneficial Ownership Concealment - Using layered legal entities, nominees, trusts or intermediaries to obscure ultimate ownership.
• Nominee Directors / Shareholders - Using individuals who formally hold positions or ownership on behalf of undisclosed controllers.
• False or Synthetic Identity - Providing fabricated, altered, stolen or combined identity information during onboarding.
• Address / Contact Reuse - Multiple apparently unrelated customers sharing addresses, phone numbers, emails, devices or other identifiers.
• Unexplained High-Risk Jurisdiction Exposure - Customer relationships or activity involving higher-risk jurisdictions without credible rationale.
• Business Profile Mismatch - Customer transactions materially inconsistent with declared occupation, business model, expected activity or source of funds.
• Rapid Changes in Ownership or Control - Frequent or unexplained changes to shareholders, directors, beneficial owners or corporate structure.

Regulations, Standards & Guidance

Global AML / CFT

• FATF Recommendations - Global standards for combating money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing.

• FATF Risk-Based Approach Guidance - Guidance and resources for applying risk-based AML/CFT supervision and controls.

• Basel Committee - Sound Management of Risks Related to Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism - Banking-sector guidance on AML/CFT governance and risk management.

• EU Anti-Money Laundering Framework / AMLA - European AML/CFT regulatory framework and the EU Anti-Money Laundering Authority.

Banking & Industry Guidance

• Wolfsberg Group - Industry principles and guidance for financial crime risk management.

• Wolfsberg Group Resources - Practical guidance and standards for financial crime risk management professionals.

• BIS papers

Sanctions

• OFAC Sanctions Programs and Guidance - Official U.S. sanctions information, compliance resources and program guidance.

Market Abuse

• EU Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) - European regulatory framework addressing insider dealing, unlawful disclosure of inside information and market manipulation.

• FCA Market Abuse Guidance - UK regulatory guidance and resources concerning market abuse.

Anti-Bribery & Corruption

• UK Bribery Act 2010 Guidance - Official guidance for commercial organizations on procedures designed to prevent bribery.

• DOJ / SEC FCPA Resource Guide - Detailed guidance on the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, enforcement principles and corporate compliance expectations.

• United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) - International framework covering corruption prevention, criminalization, international cooperation and asset recovery.

Financial Intelligence

• FinCEN Advisories - Official advisories addressing financial crime threats, typologies and suspicious financial activity.

• Egmont Group - International cooperation, standards and knowledge resources for Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs).

• Egmont Group Core Documents - Principles and operational guidance supporting cooperation and information exchange between FIUs.