An independent FinCrime journal
How the money moved, and who missed it.
Five sections on financial crime: the cases that shaped it, the laws that define it, how the U.S. punishes it, the system it runs through, and the market that supplies it. Everything is sourced to the public record.
- 55Cases on the timeline
- 5Sections
- 7Case files
The sections
Five ways into financial crime.
Timeline
How’d we get here? The people, businesses, and events that made up financial crime through the decades.
55 cases from the 1970s to today, decade by decade, each with a source and a bibliography. The 1960s are coming soon.
Explore the timeline 02Laws & Regulations
The “Crime” part of Financial Crime
The statutes FinCEN administers, plus short overviews of sanctions, wire fraud, and transnational organized crime. U.S. law only, and not legal advice.
Read the laws 03Enforcement
Protecting the US Financial System
Two components: punishing the bad guys and punishing the banks. Prosecutions, penalties, consent orders, DPAs, and monitors.
See enforcement 04The Banking & Financial System
The “Financial” part of Financial Crime
How money moves: banks, correspondent accounts, Fedwire, CHIPS, SWIFT, ACH, cards, and money services businesses.
See how money moves 05The FinCrime Ecosystem
Crypto Rails, Money Mules, Guarantee Marketplaces, Shadow Banking, The Dark Web
The markets, channels, and money brokers that criminals buy services from, with five full-length articles on Crypto Rails, Money Mules, Guarantee Marketplaces, Shadow Banking, and The Dark Web.
Map the ecosystemTimeline
Decade by decade, following the money.
Coming soon
Still being researched.
1970sFraud goes corporate and offshore
The decade's cases exposed fake assets built inside computers, offshore fund looting, and corporate bribery abroad, and they produced the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.
1980sDrug money, junk bonds, and thrifts
Cocaine-era laundering cases pushed banks into currency reporting and produced the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986, while insider trading and the "Savings & Loan Collapse" defined Wall Street and Main Street fraud.
1990sGlobal banks as laundering channels
BCCI showed a single bank could serve cartels, dictators, and terrorists across 78 countries, and the rest of the decade exposed private banking, correspondent accounts, and weak internal controls at major institutions.
2000s9/11 eraAccounting scandals and the biggest Ponzi
Enron and WorldCom produced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the USA PATRIOT Act expanded bank due diligence after 9/11, and the 2008 crisis exposed Madoff, Stanford, and Lehman's balance sheet tricks.
2010sMega-penalties, laundromats, and the first crypto frauds
US prosecutors turned AML and sanctions failures into multibillion-dollar resolutions, journalists at OCCRP mapped laundromats moving tens of billions out of Russia, and fraud moved into cyber heists and digital currency.
2020sCovid eraCrypto collapses, industrial scams, and AI fraud
Pandemic relief opened the largest government fraud losses on record, crypto platforms became both fraud vehicles and laundering rails, and organized scam compounds and deepfakes turned fraud into an industry. Cases run through June 2026.
All55 cases, one overview.
Timeline overviewArticles
Recent case files.
The Gateway That Cost $1.9 Billion
HSBC’s U.S. bank treated group affiliates as trusted correspondents, rated Mexico “standard” risk while cartel cash moved, and paid about $1.9 billion in a 2012 coordinated resolution.
€200 Billion Through a Branch Nobody Watched
Danske Bank’s Estonian non-resident portfolio moved roughly €200 billion, then produced a coordinated 2022 resolution above $2 billion and a bank-fraud conspiracy plea.
Nobody Was Watching the Money
Wirecard booked €1.9 billion in trust cash that could not be proven, slipped between AML supervisors, and collapsed in June 2020.
The Firm That Sold Secrecy
Mossack Fonseca packaged offshore opacity at industrial scale, failed as an AML gatekeeper, and shut after the Panama Papers made beneficial-ownership blindness a public fact.
When Prestige Outran Controls
Riggs Bank built a diplomatic franchise on reputation, then lost its independence when AML controls failed the relationships that franchise invited.
The Bank That Was Built to Hide
BCCI’s spider-web structure, the July 1991 collapse, and beneficial-ownership lessons that still apply.
The publication
Anonymous, and on the record.
No byline. The sources carry the weight, and every one is linked from the page it supports.
Contact the deskWhat is Investigatable?
An independent publication on financial crime investigation. It covers how money laundering, fraud, and sanctions evasion worked in documented cases, the laws that grew out of them, and what the record shows about the controls that failed.
What is on the site?
Five sections: a timeline of 55 major fraud and money laundering cases, a Laws & Regulations reference, an overview of how the U.S. punishes people and banks, a short guide to how money moves, and a map of the criminal services market. Seven long-form case files sit alongside them.
Who writes it?
The publication is anonymous by design. Nothing carries a personal byline. Each piece is meant to stand on its sources, which are linked in full.
How is it sourced?
From the public record: enforcement actions, court filings, regulator reports, legislative investigations, statutes, and established reporting. Timeline entries link to a source and a bibliography; case files carry numbered citations.
Is the Laws & Regulations section legal advice?
No. The author is not an attorney, and the section covers U.S. law only. It is a reference and training summary, current as of the date shown on the page. Each section links to the primary source, and status should be confirmed there before relying on it.
How do I get in touch?
Write to Admin@investigatable.com. Corrections with a source attached are always welcome.