Law Enforcement

U.S. officials on Wednesday struck at Southeast Asian scam compounds defrauding Americans and a global fentanyl supply chain, announcing criminal charges, sanctions, and the seizure of hundreds of fraudulent websites in a pair of coordinated enforcement actions.

The founder of a Newnan, Georgia-based lender that marketed faith-based investments to conservative audiences was charged with felony wire fraud on Thursday, escalating a civil fraud case into a criminal prosecution nearly a year after regulators shuttered what they described as a $140 million Ponzi scheme.

A Moldovan court on Wednesday sentenced oligarch and former political leader Vladimir Plahotniuc to 19 years in prison for his role in a massive bank fraud scheme that siphoned funds from three lenders in 2014.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and other UK authorities shut down eight sites across London as part of a crackdown on illegal peer-to-peer crypto trading, the agency announced on Wednesday. 

The U.S. Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on charges that the civil-rights organization fraudulently paid informants inside extremist groups and concealed those payments with bank accounts opened for nonexistent companies. 

Sweden’s Supreme Court has acquitted former Swedbank chief executive Birgitte Bonnesen, overturning the only prison conviction handed to a senior Nordic banker in connection with one of Europe’s biggest money-laundering scandals.

Nordic banks are finally beginning to move past the Baltic money-laundering scandal that engulfed the region’s financial sector, after nearly a decade of probes, fines, management upheaval, and costly compliance overhauls.

Daniel Kinahan, the Irishman long alleged to be one of Europe’s leading organized-crime figures and drug traffickers, has been arrested in Dubai on an Irish warrant and is expected to be extradited to Ireland.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is facing renewed political pressure after a judge ordered his wife, Begoña Gómez, to stand trial, deepening a corruption controversy that already involves several of his relatives and close associates.

Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has charged shipping financier John Michael Ormerod with alleged money laundering and breaches of Russia sanctions.