A financial service offered by banks and other financial institutions to electronically transfer funds between accounts, domestically or internationally. Typically facilitated through networks such as SWIFT, Fedwire, CHAPS, or SEPA, wire transfers are used for both personal and large-scale corporate payments.
Main/
Wire Transfer Services
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Code
PS0111
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Name
Wire Transfer Services
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Version
1.0
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Category
Payment, Transfer & Remittance Services
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Created
2025-03-02
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Modified
2025-04-02
Related Techniques
- Facilitates quick cross-border fund transfers for ephemeral shell firms, allowing large sums to be moved before suspicion arises.
- After finalizing transfers, criminals dissolve the shell companies, severely limiting traceability and asset recovery.
- Allows mules to send large sums domestically or internationally with few immediate questions.
- Repeated rapid transfers through multiple corridors obscure the origin and final beneficiary.
- Receive payments from defrauded victims under the guise of telemarketing charges or call-center support fees.
- Rapidly transfer funds across multiple jurisdictions, enabling layering and integration with minimal oversight.
- Criminals move large sums across borders under the pretext of legitimate consulting payments, obscuring the true source of funds.
- Speedy and international transfers enable complex layering schemes, frustrating efforts to trace actual beneficial owners or transaction origins.
- VPN usage cloaks the true origin of a wire transfer, undermining location-focused AML controls used to detect potentially high-risk or sanctioned jurisdictions.
- Disguised IP addresses reduce the effectiveness of system alerts triggered by unusual geographic patterns or impossible travel times.
- This obfuscation can assist criminals in layering funds across multiple accounts in different nations.
- Criminals exploit wire transfers to insert illicit funds in place of legitimate inbound payments, often capitalizing on minimal checks or complicit intermediaries.
- Because wire transfers are a common channel for cross-border remittances, the illicit deposits appear routine to beneficiaries expecting funds.
- Facilitates ‘cuckoo smurfing’ where illicit funds are intermingled with legitimate inbound wire transfers in amounts below reporting limits.
- Repetitive small-volume wires obscure the true origin or beneficiary, hindering detection.
- Facilitate large-scale domestic or international transfers misrepresented as institutional payments (e.g., construction, equipment) to layer illicit proceeds.
- Criminals exploit compromised email accounts or vendor impersonation to redirect wire instructions, masking true fund flow within educational institution transactions.
- Criminals can route illicit funds across jurisdictions by disguising them as legitimate hosting, equipment, or energy payments for remote mining setups.
- Large and frequent cross-border transfers complicate oversight, especially when the receiving mining provider lacks robust KYC or AML measures.
- Employees may authorize large or frequent wire transfers without proper due diligence or escalation, effectively concealing the transaction’s true origin or beneficiary.
- Insiders can suppress automated alerts or manual verifications normally triggered by high-risk cross-border or high-value transfers.
- Criminals orchestrate multiple wire transfers among domestic and international accounts to create complex fund movements.
- Rapid transfers across affiliated accounts blur the transaction trail, making it challenging to discern the ultimate source or true beneficiary.
- Enable swift movement of embezzled public monies across borders through electronic channels.
- Multiple transfers between intermediary accounts complicate audits, effectively layering and concealing illicit origins.
- Facilitate cross-border layering of illicit proceeds through funnel accounts, obscuring the flow of funds generated by human trafficking.
- Complicate detection by swiftly moving money among jurisdictions, breaking transactional links to exploitation sources.
- Traffickers employ wire transfers, sometimes layering funds through intermediary banks and fictitious recipients, to move large sums across borders.
- These transactions obscure payment trails, impeding investigations into the underlying sexual exploitation.
- Multiple international wires are sent to or from jurisdictions notorious for human smuggling, concealing the provenance of funds.
- Rapid cross-border transfers complicate authorities’ ability to identify the ultimate beneficiary, aiding in layering.
- Criminals initiate large inbound wire transfers labeled as 'foreign capital injections,' masking the illicit origin.
- Frequent cross-border wires from high-risk jurisdictions overshadow the funds’ criminal source and obscure beneficial ownership.
- Criminals send funds through rapid sequential wires across multiple banks or jurisdictions, leveraging short transfer times.
- Splitting large amounts into smaller wires helps evade suspicious transaction thresholds, creating a layered transaction chain.
- Criminals can chain multiple wire transfers through various intermediary accounts or institutions, effectively layering transactions and obscuring the original source of funds.
- By splitting large sums into smaller wire transfers, they remain below regulatory thresholds, reducing the likelihood of triggering reporting mechanisms.
- Permits fast cross-border or domestic transfers from funnel accounts, fragmenting the financial trail.
- Brief holding times and rapid withdrawals in different jurisdictions frustrate regulators' attempts to follow illicit funds.
- Diplomatic status can impede or delay suspicious transaction reporting on wire transfers, allowing rapid movement of illicit proceeds across borders.
- Complex layering is facilitated by sending multiple transfers under official diplomatic reasons, making fund tracing more challenging.
- Enable layering steps following currency conversions, as illicit funds can be swiftly relocated to multiple accounts or jurisdictions.
- In many scenarios, criminals exploit foreign wire transfers to further fragment the audit trail after each currency swap.
- After layering funds through multiple currency swaps, criminals wire proceeds across various institutions and jurisdictions.
- Successive wire transfers create complex transaction chains, complicating the audit trail and hindering AML investigations.
- Offenders initiate multiple international wire transfers through various institutions, exploiting incomplete identification requirements to mask the origin of funds.
- Repeated cross-border wires in quick succession or without sufficient payment details complicate investigative efforts, particularly in jurisdictions with lax reporting standards.
- Criminals exploit or misconfigure internal wire messaging fields (e.g., SWIFT fields) to hide sanctioned beneficiaries or suspicious payment details.
- By overriding transaction-monitoring parameters, they bypass AML triggers, enabling large or high-risk transfers to flow undetected.
- Criminals push victims to wire substantial sums under romantic pretenses, swiftly moving illicit proceeds across borders.
- Electronic transfers bypass in-person checks, allowing scammers to layer the funds through multiple accounts before detection.
- High-value wire transfers facilitate rapid cross-border payments for arms, often layered through multiple accounts to obscure the source.
- The speed and global reach of wire transfers can outpace due diligence, allowing illicit profits to move quickly across jurisdictions.
- Criminals use deepfake voice calls to impersonate legitimate account holders or executives, instructing financial institutions to authorize large wire transfers.
- Voice-based identity checks are bypassed, as staff or automated systems are deceived by convincingly replicated speech patterns.
- Urgent or high-value requests are framed with advanced generative AI, reducing suspicion and prompting immediate release of funds.
- Scammers request victims to wire upfront payments, citing contrived emergencies or time-sensitive opportunities.
- After funds arrive, perpetrators immediately layer them via successive wire transfers to isolate them from the original victim payment, complicating investigative tracing.
- Facilitates swift movement of government relief proceeds across multiple accounts or jurisdictions.
- Large wire transfers from shell or nominee entities help layer illicit funds and obscure their original source.
- Large sums of fraudulently obtained relief funds are rapidly moved between accounts or across borders.
- Multiple intermediate transfers create complex money trails, complicating oversight and detection.
- Victims are instructed to wire funds labeled as taxes, closing costs, or other charges into the scammers’ accounts.
- Perpetrators rapidly disperse these funds to further accounts or jurisdictions, hindering traceability.
- Attackers provide fake or updated wire instructions under the guise of a legitimate vendor, diverting payments into their own accounts.
- Wire transfers often settle quickly, allowing criminals to move or disperse funds before the fraud is discovered.
- Funds are routed in segmented wire transfers, with each institution or intermediary only processing a discrete portion of the overall flow.
- Staff at one end of a wire lacks contextual data about parallel deposits or onward transfers, ensuring no single party can fully map the entire laundering chain.