The Wolfsberg Group’s new guidance on banking services for non-bank payment service providers addresses a structural weakness in the payment system: banks provide the accounts through which payment institutions collect, pool and redistribute money, while often seeing only part of the underlying payment chain. Wolfsberg does not treat this limited
AI Fraud: The Mills Review Exposes Financial Enablers The UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Mills Review on AI and the future of retail financial services should not be read merely as a technology report. For consumer protection organisations, it is a warning about the next stage of industrialised financial fraud. The
$68 Billion Lost to US Scams — Europe Lacks the Loss Estimate A landmark new study puts a hard number on a problem victims have long felt in their bank accounts and their mental health. According to the new study “United States of Scams: The Financial and Emotional Fallout”, published
Københavns Andelskasse and Payvision: Victims Left to Chase Empty Shells Danish authorities have secured another conviction in the Københavns Andelskasse money-laundering scandal. But the case exposes a larger European failure. The victims are not only facing AML breaches. They are facing an enforcement model that confirms wrongdoing after the operating
The uncomfortable question is no longer whether banks had AML policies. The question is whether their published claims of group-wide control were ever tested against operational reality. A new EU standard exposes an old credibility problem Large European banking groups have told investors, regulators and the public for years that
In the United States, online fraud linked to Southeast Asian scam compounds has moved from a niche cybercrime issue to a major law-enforcement, sanctions and national-security concern. The U.S. Department of Justice has created a Scam Center Strike Force targeting cryptocurrency investment fraud, cyber-enabled fraud, human trafficking and money-laundering operations
Online investment scams rarely begin with one large bank transfer. They usually start much earlier: with an online advertisement, a registration form, a small first deposit, a fake trading account, a dashboard showing apparent profits, repeated calls from an “account manager”, and a withdrawal process that becomes increasingly difficult. For
ESMA: Unauthorised CASPs Must Wind Down On 23 June 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a clear warning to crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) that have not obtained authorisation under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). After the end of the MiCA transitional period on 1 July 2026,
Meta, TikTok and Google are facing consumer complaints in Europe over financial scam advertisements. But the key question goes beyond platform compliance: if regulators impose fines, why should the money disappear into public budgets while the victims remain uncompensated? On 21 May 2026, BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, together with
On 25 June 2026, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales is scheduled to hear the appeal in the Hamblin & Anor v Moorwand Ltd & Anor [2025] EWHC 817 (Ch). The case deserves attention far beyond the United Kingdom. It raises a question that is central to modern
