Cybercriminal

Cybercriminals gain unauthorized access to legitimate customer accounts through methods such as stolen credentials, social engineering, or malicious software. Once inside, they launder illicit funds by commingling them with the rightful account holder’s normal transactions. This approach:

• Leverages the account’s established profile to circumvent typical AML triggers.
• Exploits remote banking or custodial services, making it difficult for financial institutions to distinguish fraudulent activity.

Financial institutions face immediate challenges as cybercriminals initiate high-value transfers or purchases from these compromised accounts, undermining transaction monitoring and due diligence processes.

Cybercriminals rely on Tor, VPNs, and other anonymizing tools to conceal their digital footprints while conducting illicit activities or laundering stolen funds. By routing transactions through multiple encrypted nodes, they impede financial institutions' ability to flag unusual origins or correlate suspicious traffic, prolonging detection and complicating law enforcement investigations.

Generates illicit proceeds (e.g., ransomware, phishing) and immediately launches automated scripts to dissipate the takings across banking, PSP, and crypto channels.

Cybercriminals leverage cross-chain bridges to layer illicit funds across multiple blockchains, severing traceable links for investigators.

• They exploit lock-and-mint bridging and minimal-KYC decentralized platforms to obscure the source and flow of stolen or illicitly obtained crypto assets.
• By rapidly moving tokens among different chains, these actors break transaction continuity, complicating financial institutions' efforts to track ownership, identify beneficiaries, and detect suspicious patterns.
• An example is the Lazarus Group, known to deploy bridging techniques to launder large sums of misappropriated funds, further hindering conventional monitoring systems.

Cybercriminals, including those linked to North Korea, exploit mixing services to launder stolen or illicitly obtained cryptocurrency. They:

• Combine mixing with other layering techniques, complicating chain analytics and regulatory scrutiny.
• Use decentralized or custodial mixers (e.g., Tornado Cash) to conceal transaction trails, making it difficult for financial institutions to trace the origin of funds.

Cybercriminals deploy malicious cryptomining scripts or malware to hijack victims’ computing resources and mine cryptocurrency without consent. They fragment and aggregate the proceeds across multiple unregulated wallets before converting them into fiat or alternative digital assets. This rapid, opaque movement of funds exploits AML blind spots, complicating detection and due diligence, and leverages layering techniques across exchanges, payment platforms, and P2P channels to further obscure the illicit origin.

They orchestrate deepfake-based impersonation by cloning the voices or videos of legitimate account holders, executives, or money mule holders to request unauthorized fund transfers or gain account access. This exploitation deceives financial staff or automated systems, enabling the release of illicit proceeds under false pretenses.

Cybercriminals exploit software vulnerabilities or deploy malicious tools to:

• Inject false transaction data and override audit logs.
• Suppress or manipulate system alerts that would otherwise flag suspicious activities.

This undermines financial institutions' real-time monitoring and due diligence, allowing fraudulent transactions or altered account records to appear legitimate and evade detection.

Cybercriminals knowingly orchestrate e-commerce manipulation schemes by:

• Creating counterfeit storefronts or hijacking legitimate platforms, making them appear as genuine online commerce.
• Managing sham listings and artificially inflating sales and refunds.

These activities exploit digital anonymity, complicating financial institutions' monitoring and detection efforts.

• Set up deceptive fundraising appeals on social media, emphasizing emotional or urgent narratives to solicit numerous small donations.
• Exploit minimal identity checks by operating multiple accounts, funneling contributions into personal or newly opened bank accounts.
• Commingle legitimate and fraudulent funds, obscuring their origin and complicating detection for financial institutions.

Cybercriminals collect stolen personal data or fabricate synthetic identities to pass automated KYC checks and take over existing accounts. They may also digitally manipulate submitted documents—altering metadata or images—to appear legitimate during remote onboarding. This allows them to bypass identity verification controls, facilitating undetected transfers or withdrawals that obscure the illicit origin of funds from financial institutions.

Cybercriminals exploit in-game economies by:

• Using stolen or unverified credit/debit card information or illicit cryptocurrency to acquire large amounts of in-game currency.
• Rapidly conducting microtransactions and in-game asset transfers to fragment the audit trail and obscure the illicit source of funds.
• Reselling digital items at manipulated prices on third-party websites or within the gaming platform itself, with proceeds returned as fiat or cryptocurrency.

These practices complicate transaction monitoring for financial institutions, making it difficult to trace the origin and movement of criminal proceeds.

Cybercriminals use near-instant swaps on these platforms to:

• Rapidly launder stolen or fraudulently obtained cryptocurrency, severing direct links to the original illicit wallet.
• Exploit the minimal verification environment, impeding financial institutions' efforts to freeze or recover compromised funds.

Cybercriminals exploit metaverse platforms to launder illicit cryptocurrency by:

• Swapping stolen tokens on decentralized exchanges to evade detection.
• Purchasing digital assets (e.g., virtual real estate or NFTs) in the metaverse to layer funds through complex transaction chains.
• Rapidly reselling these assets to unwitting buyers, receiving new tokens or fiat that appear detached from the original illicit source.

This process challenges financial institutions’ ability to trace and link transactions back to the underlying crime.

Cybercriminals use multi-hop VPNs to:

• Obfuscate their true geographic origin, complicating cross-border investigative cooperation.
• Maintain operational security when coordinating hacking or fraud schemes tied to illicit fund flows.
• Disrupt digital evidence correlation, hampering financial institutions' and law enforcement's ability to monitor and attribute suspicious online transactions.

Cybercriminals leverage or steal in-game currencies and digital items by:

• Obtaining them through hacked user accounts or compromised payment methods.
• Rapidly reselling or trading these stolen assets on online platforms with minimal AML checks.

Financial institutions struggle to detect these funds once reintroduced via various payment channels, as the original source is masked behind multiple in-game transactions and illicit marketplaces.

Cybercriminals who steal or illicitly acquire crypto (for instance, via exchange hacks) use peel chains by:

• Rapidly dispersing stolen funds across many newly created addresses, reducing the chance of immediate detection.
• Employing repetitive small transfers that fracture the available trail, complicating investigators’ ability to trace funds back to the hack or theft.

This tactic leverages large-scale hacks like the Bitfinex or Bithumb breaches, where stolen crypto was systematically moved through numerous micro-transactions to conceal its illicit source.

Ransomware operators, as specialized cybercriminals, forcibly extort cryptocurrency payments and rapidly layer these proceeds. Their role involves:

• Employing ransomware-as-a-service platforms and threatening victims with double extortion (data encryption and disclosure).
• Generating new wallet addresses for each incident, fragmenting the transactional trail.
• Engaging in chain-hopping, mixing services, and foreign exchanges to thwart tracing and obscure the crime’s origin.

These activities knowingly circumvent AML controls, posing significant challenges for financial institutions attempting to identify and freeze illicit funds.

Cybercriminals exploit remote identity deception by:

• Submitting forged or doctored online identity evidence to register multiple accounts under different aliases.
• Using proxies, VPNs, or remote desktop tools to conceal their true location, evading biometric or liveness checks.

These tactics erode the reliability of remote verification, allowing them to infiltrate financial platforms and move illicit proceeds with minimal detection.

Cybercriminals execute remote verification bypass by:

• Submitting stolen or altered identification records (including spoofed biometric data) to fool automated screening tools.
• Repeatedly creating accounts from the same device or IP address with minor variations in documentation.
• Leveraging VPNs, proxies, or remote desktop tools to conceal location and enable third-party manipulation of identity checks.

External attackers (hackers) infiltrate systems to tamper with financial records by:

• Deploying malware or exploiting system vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access, modifying transaction histories, or deleting critical logs.
• Injecting falsified data into digital records, obscuring the actual flow of funds and frustrating compliance or audit processes.
• Disrupting financial institutions’ ability to detect anomalies, as corrupted records degrade the reliability of internal controls and transaction monitoring.

Cybercriminals orchestrate fraudulent or deceptive token offerings by:

• Creating and promoting ICO or IDO websites using plagiarized or misleading materials to lure investors.
• Launching phishing campaigns that trick participants into disclosing private keys or depositing funds into criminal wallets.
• Abruptly abandoning the project once enough capital is raised (exit scam) or layering funds across multiple wallets to obscure the money trail.

These activities complicate financial institutions' monitoring and due diligence efforts, as cybercriminals exploit anonymous online channels and rapid blockchain transactions to hide their identities and transaction flows.

Cybercriminals knowingly orchestrate vendor impersonation by:

• Using compromised or spoofed email accounts to trick victims into sending payments to attacker-controlled accounts.
• Exploiting trusted vendor relationships and urgency in payment requests to bypass scrutiny.
• Rapidly layering or dispersing the stolen funds through multiple accounts, complicating financial institution monitoring and traceability.

Cybercriminals engaged in fraud misuse virtual IBANs to rapidly reroute stolen or illicit proceeds through accounts that appear to be standard IBANs. This practice complicates investigative tracing and extends the layering process, taking advantage of the normal IBAN-like format to evade detection.

Cybercriminals exploit virtual worlds by:

• Purchasing or earning in-game currencies or assets with illicit funds.
• Rapidly transferring these assets across multiple accounts to obscure traceability.
• Converting them to mainstream cryptocurrencies or fiat through weakly regulated channels, complicating financial institutions’ ability to link transactions back to the original illicit source.

They may also engage in wash trading or exploit code vulnerabilities to manipulate asset values, creating additional layers of complexity for investigators.