Insights

Weekly Round-Up, 18 – 22 April – 22

Written by Johan Landström | Apr 21, 2022 10:00:00 PM

In the “Weekly Round-Up” we summarise and give extra reading suggestions for some of the past weeks financial crime news headlines, powered by Acuminor’s crime universe ThreatView® .

Another sunny spring week has passed, and here are a few articles that we have picked up during the easter and over the week. There have been a few interesting operational news and interesting reports that I want to share. Let’s start with some shorter news.

Two separate articles regarding North Korea and recent crypto heists both heists linked to the notorious threat actor the Lazarus group. The first one is regarding the hack against the popular online game Axie Infinty last month

BBC – North Korean hackers target gamers in $615m crypto heist – US

The second story comes from the Crypto analysis firm Elliptic where they have investigated the massive crypto heist (2nd largest known theft) of the Ronin network.

Elliptic – North Korea’s Lazarus Group Identified as Exploiters Behind $540 Million Ronin Bridge Heist

Austrac has released two excellent reports on what to look out for regarding illicit virtual currency indicators and indicators relating to Ransomware and ransomware payments.

Austrac – Detecting and stopping ransomware payments

Austrac – Preventing the criminal abuse of digital currencies

Jumping to a different story from Spain where a touch of Miami Vice has made a return. Authorities have arrested 22 individuals linked to the construction of Go-fast boats used for drug running.

OCCRP – Spain Arrests 22 Linked to the Construction of Narco Go-Fast Boats

Two operation updates from Europol and Interpol. Europol has been part of joint action involving Dutch, German and Belgian Authorities in the hunt for drug lords

Europol – Cocaine lords targeted in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands

Interpol has coordinated an operation regarding illegal logging in the Caribbeans and Latin America.

Interpol – Illegal logging in Latin America and Caribbean inflicting irreversible damage -INTERPOL

And to finish this week’s round-up of news and reports. FATF has released a landmark report regarding, “Report on the State of Effectiveness and Compliance with the FATF Standards”.

FATF – Report on the State of Effectiveness and Compliance with the FATF Standards

So enjoy some exciting stories and have a great weekend!