In mid-December, FinCEN issued an Alert to bring awareness to “Fraud Schemes Abusing FinCEN’s Name, Insignia, and Authorities for Financial Gain”. There has been a noticeable increase in these types of fraud schemes and the Alert specifically draws attention to some related to Beneficial Owner Information (BOI) reporting, Money Service Business (MSB) registration and the impersonation of FinCEN and its employees.
Institutions should be on the lookout for such scams and FinCEN requests that financial institutions reference this Alert by including the key term “FIN-2024-FINCENSCAMS” in SAR field 2 (Filing Institution Note to FinCEN) and the Narrative. They should also select SAR field 34(z) (Fraud – Other) and include any other relevant terms, such as “BOI Scam,” “MSB Scam,” and/or “FinCEN Imposter Scam” in the text box.
We summarized this in more detail in the February Issue of Banking on BCC. We do encourage you to give the Alert a read as it contains even more helpful information in identifying these types of scams.
In other news, FinCEN also announced that it has rescinded two previous Alerts on “Israeli Extremist Settler Violence Against Palestinians in the West Bank”. These were originally published on February 1, 2024, and July 11, 2024. As a result, institutions no longer need to include the key term “FIN-2024-WBEXTREMISM” on Suspicious Activity Reports.
Published
2025/02/10
