Money Laundering Case Studies: 114 Real Examples from APG Members
Pathik Shah
- Most articles explaining money laundering illustrate it with invented examples. A fictional drug dealer buys a fictional laundromat. It is a serviceable teaching device and it is completely useless for anyone who has to build a detection scenario, because invented examples contain only the details the author thought to include.
- This article does the opposite. Every example below is a real, documented case submitted by a national authority to the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and published in its Yearly Typologies Report 2025. There are 114 of them in total. I have selected the ones that best illustrate each method, kept the figures and outcomes intact, and explained what each case actually teaches a compliance function.
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Attribution note. Case numbers refer to the numbering used in the APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025. All case studies are reproduced in summarised form with figures preserved. The APG sanitises these cases, so individuals appear as Person A, Person B and so on, and third-party jurisdictions as Jurisdiction X or Y. Those labels are not consistent between cases. Full sourcing appears in the references.
- What a money laundering case study is, and how to read a sanitised one
- What the 114 cases contain
- Placement: how criminal proceeds enter the financial system
- Layering: how the trail is broken
- Integration: where the money ends up
- Cases involving professional enablers and gatekeepers
- Cases that ended in recovery
- How to use these case studies in your own risk assessment
- Frequently asked questions
The cases are organised by the stage of laundering they best illustrate, because that is how most practitioners think about detection design. Where a case spans more than one stage, and most of the interesting ones do, it appears where its most distinctive feature sits.
- All 114 case studies come from official APG reporting submitted by national authorities, not from invented illustrations.
- Cases are organised by the three stages of money laundering: placement, layering and integration, because that is how detection is designed.
- Placement in these cases runs through benami and nominee accounts, cash-intensive businesses, mule networks and high-value goods purchased at merchants.
- Layering runs through shell company networks, same-day stablecoin conversion, trade documentation and cross-border wire chains.
- Integration runs into real estate, construction projects including a four-star hotel, gold and jewellery, and vehicles.
- Recovery is the exception. Where it succeeded, the report was fast, a cooperation channel already existed, and the asset had not yet been converted.
What a Money Laundering Case Study Is, and How to Read a Sanitised One
A money laundering case study is a documented account of an actual laundering scheme, usually published by a regulator, financial intelligence unit or FATF-style regional body, describing how funds moved, what was detected and what the outcome was.
It differs from a typology in scope. A typology is the general method, for example the use of mule accounts. A case study is one instance of that method with real figures, real sequencing and a real outcome. Typologies tell you what to look for. Case studies tell you what it looked like when someone actually found it. [1]
Why the Details Are Removed
Many of these cases involve ongoing investigations or judicial proceedings. The APG therefore edits out identifying details before publication. Individuals become Person A, Person B and so on. Third-party jurisdictions become Jurisdiction X or Jurisdiction Y. Where a submitting member has referred to its own jurisdiction and its own authorities, those references are left identified, which is why you will see Hong Kong Customs, the Singapore Police Force and PPATK named while their counterparties are not.
The most important reading rule is this. Within a single case study, every reference to Person A is the same individual. Across two different case studies, Person A is two different people. The same applies to jurisdiction labels. Treating these as consistent identifiers across the report is the most common misreading of typology documents I encounter.
People dismiss sanitised cases as too vague to use. That is the wrong conclusion. You cannot draw jurisdiction-level inferences from them, which is a genuine limitation. But the sequencing, the account behaviour and the professional roles involved are all intact, and those are the parts you actually build detection rules from.
Dipali Vora | AML/CFT Practitioner, AML Guild
What You Can and Cannot Conclude
| You can conclude | You cannot conclude |
|---|---|
| That a method is in active use in the region | That a named jurisdiction has a particular problem |
| The typical sequencing of a scheme | The prevalence of a method across the region |
| Which account behaviours preceded detection | That undetected schemes look the same as detected ones |
| Which professional roles were involved | That the professionals were knowing participants unless stated |
| What triggered the investigation | That the same trigger will work in your institution |
Table 1. Reading limits for sanitised case studies. Source: methodology section, APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025 [1].
What the 114 Case Studies Contain
Seventeen APG members and one observer jurisdiction submitted 114 case studies to the 2025 report, representing over 40% of active members. Fifteen contributors were from Asia, one from CANZUS and one from the Pacific.
Each case carries descriptive tags. Aggregating those tags gives a picture of what regional authorities are currently investigating and prosecuting, which is a useful but imperfect proxy for what is currently happening.
Figure 1. Distribution of descriptive tags across the 114 APG case studies. Cases carry multiple tags, so shares do not sum to 100%. Data source: APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025 [1].
Two things stand out. Fraud, at 59%, dominates everything else combined. And financial institutions, at 55%, remain the primary channel by a wide margin over virtual asset service providers at 11%. If your risk assessment treats crypto as the dominant laundering channel, the case evidence does not support that position.
The Scale of Individual Cases
Values in the case set range across three orders of magnitude. The chart below places seven of the cases discussed in this article on a logarithmic scale, which is the only way to show them together honestly.
Figure 2. Value laundered in seven selected APG case studies, USD equivalent, logarithmic scale. Data source: APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025 [1]. USD conversions as stated in the source.
The Three Stages, Mapped to Real Methods
The FATF placement, layering and integration model is often taught abstractly. The case set lets us populate it with methods that appear in actual investigations.
Figure 3. Laundering methods observed across the APG case set, mapped to the three-stage model. Data source: APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025 [1].
Placement: How Criminal Proceeds Enter the Financial System
Placement is the first stage of money laundering, in which criminal proceeds are introduced into the financial system. Across the APG case set the dominant placement methods are cash deposits into accounts opened under another person's name, mule account networks, and cash-intensive trading businesses.
Case 56: Benami Accounts and the Signature That Kept Changing
A young adult in Pakistan, identified as Person D, opened multiple personal and business accounts at several banks over three years, declaring himself a construction contractor. He used a different signature at each institution. Those accounts received substantial cash deposits which were withdrawn shortly afterwards and redeposited into his other accounts. Total activity ran to billions of rupees, matching neither his declared profile nor his tax record.
The detection trigger was mundane. Discrepancies in his know your customer information were reported. What the case teaches is that placement through benami, meaning nominee, accounts is defeated by cross-institution comparison rather than by any single clever rule. No individual bank saw anything decisive. [1]
Case 55: The Supermarket That Was Not a Supermarket
Person C ran a supermarket in a border region of Pakistan and was flagged by several banks. He held numerous personal and business accounts, including accounts in the names of minors, transacted with parties in unrelated geographies and in businesses unrelated to his declared line, and turned over more than PKR 1 billion, roughly USD 3.5 million, largely in high-value cash. Travel records showed visits to high-risk jurisdictions. His counterparties had previously been referred to law enforcement in connection with hawala and smuggling.
The pattern worth extracting is the combination: cash-intensive declared business, accounts in the names of minors, geographic mismatch between declared and actual counterparties, and a tax record that does not support the turnover. Any one of those is weak. Together they are decisive.
Case 98: Credit Cards, Jewellery Stores and Forged Signatures
Between March 2023 and August 2024, Person B and seven others in Chinese Taipei laundered TWD 209,922,791, approximately USD 7 million, for a fraud syndicate that had impersonated law enforcement officials to defraud victims in another jurisdiction. The method was to use credit cards to buy high-value gold and electronics in Chinese Taipei, forging the cardholder signature to bypass KYC at the point of sale, then convert the goods to cash.
This is placement through a merchant rather than through a bank. The suspicious transaction reports came from the card issuers, not from the jewellers. Dealers in precious metals and stones sat in the middle of a USD 7 million laundering operation and the alerting happened elsewhere.
Wondering whether your own placement scenarios would have caught any of these? An AML Guild specialist can test your rule set against the published case evidence and show you where the gaps sit. Find your expert at amlguild.com.
Layering: How the Audit Trail Gets Broken
Layering is the second stage, in which the connection between the funds and their criminal origin is obscured through successive transfers, conversions and corporate structures. In the APG case set the recurring layering tools are shell company networks, stablecoin conversion and trade documentation.
Case 23: The Largest Money Laundering Case Hong Kong Customs Has Run
In January 2024, Hong Kong Customs dismantled a transnational syndicate that had laundered approximately HKD 14 billion, roughly USD 1.8 billion, through trade activity. The investigation began with a single suspicious transaction report alleging that a few trading companies were stooge companies. Fund flow analysis expanded the scope to further companies established by the same syndicate.
Funds were injected from overseas entities through the purported export of diamonds, precious stones and electronic products to several jurisdictions. Data analysis showed that the companies' transactions, declared trade turnover, business models and official records were, in the report's phrasing, alarmingly incommensurate. Intelligence exchange identified HKD 2.9 billion, roughly USD 373 million, of the apparently legitimate payments as proceeds of mobile application scams in another jurisdiction. Eight people were arrested between January and May 2024 and HKD 168 million, roughly USD 21.6 million, of assets were frozen.
This is trade based money laundering at industrial scale, and the detection insight is worth stating plainly. The trigger was not the trade documentation. It was the mismatch between declared trade volume and observable financial behaviour. The documents were designed to survive inspection. The proportions were not.
Case 69: A Professional Money Launderer and a Single Corporate Service Provider
Between 2019 and 2020, Singapore's Commercial Affairs Department received multiple reports that more than USD 8 million derived from foreign investment scams had been transferred into the Singapore accounts of four different shell companies. Investigators linked the reports because each company's accounts showed pass-through transactions, the companies transacted with one another, and they shared counterparties.
Screening then revealed the decisive link. All four had been incorporated by the same corporate service provider, Company O, which had been approached by one Person N. Person N appointed foreign nationals as directors and engaged Company O to supply local resident directors. Person N and one of the foreign directors were arrested in November 2022 while transiting Singapore, having been placed on a stop list two years earlier.
The transferable lesson is that the shared incorporation agent was a stronger link than any transaction pattern. Corporate service provider concentration is an underused analytic in most institutions.
Case 36: Shell to Shell to Crypto
A Japanese case describes the mechanic in its simplest form. A criminal syndicate purchased a shell company, Company A, and had fraudulent funds transferred into its account. The funds moved to an account in the name of Company B, and that account was used to purchase crypto assets which were then exchanged back into fiat. Arrests followed under the Organized Crime Punishment Act for concealment of criminal proceeds.
Four steps, two corporate vehicles and one round trip through crypto. The value of this case is its plainness. It is the template that the more elaborate cases decorate.
Case 6: USDT as the Settlement Layer
Indonesian FIU analysts identified transactions of approximately IDR 141 billion, around USD 5 million, connected to a transnational human trafficking syndicate linked to online scams. Funds received through bank accounts were used to purchase USDT amounting to USD 295,373 through foreign virtual asset service providers. On the same day, part of that USDT was liquidated and IDR 2,592,678,322, around USD 156,300, was transferred to Indonesian bank accounts belonging to the syndicate, using peer-to-peer transactions through foreign VASPs.
Note the timing. Purchase and partial liquidation on the same day. Crypto here is not an investment or a store of value. It is a settlement rail used to cross a border and break a trail, and the holding period is measured in hours.
Same-day acquisition and liquidation of a stablecoin is not investment behaviour and it should never be scored as such. If your monitoring treats virtual asset activity as a customer preference rather than as a potential transfer mechanism, this case is the one to put in front of your model risk committee.
Jyoti Maheshwari | AML/CFT Practitioner, AML Guild
Integration: Where the Money Ends Up
Integration is the final stage, in which laundered funds re-enter the legitimate economy as apparently lawful assets. Across the APG case set the dominant integration assets are real estate, construction projects, gold and jewellery, and vehicles.
Case 105: The Four-Star Hotel
Person F, an Indonesian entrepreneur, is suspected of operating an illegal online gambling network. Between 2020 and 2022 his personal accounts received transfers from nominee accounts managed by gambling agents, amounting to roughly IDR 356 billion, around USD 21.5 million, into one account and IDR 46 billion, around USD 2.8 million, into another.
A substantial portion was then transferred to Company M, where Person F's son held the position of director. Approximately IDR 146 billion, around USD 8.8 million, was used to finance the construction of a four-star hotel. PPATK and the Indonesian National Police froze IDR 72.3 billion, around USD 4.4 million, across multiple accounts, and the hotel project was seized.
Construction is an especially effective integration route because the asset does not exist yet. There is no purchase transaction to flag, only a sequence of payments to contractors that look like ordinary business expenditure. The family connection through the son's directorship is the detectable feature.
Case 7: Cheques into Real Estate
In a Philippine offshore gaming operator case, financial analysis by the Anti-Money Laundering Council found cheque payments representing the acquisition of real estate totalling PHP 409.7 million, roughly USD 7.1 million. The same analysis noted foreign exchange transactions funded by cash or cheque deposits made on or near the date of the exchange, layering between accounts, multiple deposits in one day, large withdrawals following deposits, transit accounts, misrepresented figures in audited financial statements, and shell companies in real estate development and second-hand luxury car retail.
That list is effectively a ready-made indicator set. It is worth reading twice by anyone maintaining a real estate sector risk assessment.
Case 8: Professional Enablers and a Fake Investment Scheme
A criminal syndicate based in Malaysia operated for only a few years yet allegedly accumulated close to RM 200 million, around USD 47.2 million. It offered fake investment portfolios through social media advertising. The syndicate used professional enablers, and company secretaries specifically, to set up companies that persuaded victims they were investing in a legitimate scheme or buying shares in a real company. Four foreign individuals were charged, convicted and fined for predicate offences, with asset forfeiture proceedings ongoing.
Cases Involving Professional Enablers and Gatekeepers
Professional intermediaries appear throughout the case set, sometimes as knowing participants and sometimes as service providers who failed to detect what they were facilitating. The distinction matters legally and is often not resolved within the published summary.
Figure 4. Professional roles appearing in the cases discussed in this article. This counts illustrative cases selected for this article, not the full 114-case set. Data source: APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025 [1].
Case 51: The Ownership Threshold, and How It Was Moved
New Zealand's Department of Internal Affairs became aware that a foreign national, Person A, a client of a New Zealand trust and company service provider, might be subject to domestic sanctions by association. Person A was a business associate of a sanctioned oligarch, Person B, who owned Group A, a global group spanning aluminium, oil, energy, real estate and telecoms. Person A's employer was a real estate subsidiary of Group A.
Under the relevant legislation, holding such a position in a company that is 50% or more owned by Person B would deem Person A an associate, and associates are deemed sanctioned persons. Following a restructure, Group A's holding in the relevant company fell to 49%, below the threshold. Investigators were pursuing evidence that Person B also controlled another entity holding 25.9%, which would put effective ownership at 74.9% and re-establish the threshold.
This is the single most instructive sanctions case in the report. The evasion was not concealment. It was arithmetic. A one-percentage-point restructure defeated a bright-line test, and defeating it required tracing indirect holdings across a second entity.
Case 92: Fifty-One Arrests, and Who They Were
A criminal syndicate in Chinese Taipei used forged proxy-written wills to register inherited real property. The method was systematic: download the register of uninherited land and buildings, obtain information about descendants, exploit police and household registration officers to obtain personal information, then send sales agents to inspect the properties. Where a descendant had no children or heirs could not be contacted, the syndicate forged a lease contract, had a locksmith open the door, and used documents found inside to forge a will.
Six wills were certified by the principal suspect in his capacity as a lawyer. After a six-month investigation, 51 suspects were arrested, including lawyers, village representatives, police officers, household registration officers, land administration agents and other professionals. The court approved seizure of seven houses and fourteen land holdings with an estimated market value of about TWD 60 million, around USD 2 million. Illegal gains from eleven attempted transfers, six successful, were put at TWD 140 million, around USD 4.6 million.
The relevant point for compliance is that the fraud was executed almost entirely by people holding professional or official positions. Gatekeeper risk in this case was not a peripheral vulnerability. It was the operating model.
Do your DNFBP and gatekeeper controls reflect what these cases actually show? Have an AML Guild specialist review your third-party and professional-intermediary risk framework against the published evidence. Book a session at amlguild.com.
Cases That Ended in Recovery
Only a minority of case studies record a substantial recovery. Those that do share a common profile: speed, a pre-existing cooperation channel, and assets that had not yet left the reachable financial system.
Case 110 and Case 10: USD 39 Million Withheld in a Business Email Compromise
In July 2024, a Singapore commodity firm fell victim to a business email compromise and transferred USD 42.3 million to a fake supplier. The supplier's email account had likely been compromised and the correspondence intercepted.
This case appears in both APG documents, and the figures differ slightly between them. The 2025 report gives USD 39.3 million withheld and nine arrests; the May 2026 report gives USD 39 million and seven arrests, and names Timor-Leste as the receiving jurisdiction. The 2026 account is used here as the later of the two.
The funds were transferred to a bank account in Timor-Leste. The Singapore Police Force requested assistance from the Timor-Leste authorities through multiple channels at once, including INTERPOL's Global Rapid Intervention of Payments mechanism, the ARIN-AP contact point, Egmont Group FIU channels and mutual legal assistance. Singapore was quickly alerted that USD 39 million had been successfully withheld from the fake supplier's account. Joint investigation led to seven arrests and recovery of over USD 2.2 million in cash. Intelligence exchange between Singapore, Timor-Leste and Indonesia then traced further funds to Indonesian accounts held by two of those arrested, and approximately USD 120,000 was provisionally frozen.
| Element | What made the difference |
|---|---|
| Elapsed time | Reported quickly; funds withheld shortly afterwards |
| Channels used | Four in parallel: I-GRIP, ARIN-AP, Egmont FIU, MLA |
| INTERPOL mechanism | Global Rapid Intervention of Payments |
| Regional network | ARIN-AP asset recovery network |
| Asset state | Funds still in a bank account, not converted or dispersed |
| Outcome | USD 39 million withheld, seven arrests, USD 2.2 million cash recovered, USD 120,000 frozen in Indonesia |
Table 2. Factors behind the recovery in Case 110. Source: APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025 [1].
Contrast this with the scam-hub cases, where proceeds convert to stablecoin within the same day and cross several jurisdictions before anyone reports a loss. The difference in outcome is almost entirely explained by the difference in elapsed time and asset form.
How to Use These Money Laundering Case Studies in Your Own Risk Assessment
Case studies are only worth reading if they change a control. The four exercises below convert a report like this into concrete changes and can be completed by one analyst in a day.
- Map each case to your customer and product categories. Take the twelve cases in this article and ask which of your customer types could have hosted the same activity. Cases you cannot place anywhere are either irrelevant to your business or a gap in how you have segmented it.
- Extract the detection trigger, not just the method. Case 56 was triggered by KYC discrepancies. Case 23 by a single suspicious transaction report. Case 69 by shared incorporation agent. List the triggers, then check which of them your own systems could generate.
- Test your thresholds against Case 51. If a control depends on a bright-line ownership percentage, work out what a one-point restructure would do to it, and whether you would detect indirect holdings that restore the threshold.
- Time your interdiction path. Case 110 succeeded because a report on day one produced a freeze on day two. Establish honestly how long the equivalent sequence takes in your institution, then compare it with the same-day conversion speed shown in Case 6.
None of these require new systems. They require someone to read the cases with your own control environment open alongside them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about money laundering case studies, real examples, and how AML Guild supports your business.
What is money laundering, with an example?
Money laundering is the process of disguising the origin of criminal proceeds so that they appear to come from a legitimate source. A real example from the APG 2025 report: a Japanese criminal syndicate purchased a shell company, had fraudulent funds transferred into its account, moved them to a second company account, used that account to buy crypto assets, and then exchanged those assets back into fiat currency. Each step put more distance between the money and the fraud that generated it.
What are the three stages of money laundering?
Placement, layering and integration. Placement introduces criminal proceeds into the financial system, for example through cash deposits into nominee accounts or purchases at jewellery stores. Layering breaks the audit trail through successive transfers, shell companies, trade documentation or crypto conversion. Integration returns the funds to the legitimate economy as apparently lawful assets such as real estate, construction projects, gold or vehicles.
What is layering in money laundering?
Layering is the second stage, in which the connection between funds and their criminal origin is deliberately obscured. In the APG case set the recurring layering methods are shell company networks, same-day stablecoin conversion through foreign virtual asset service providers, trade documentation that misrepresents value or volume, and chains of cross-border wire transfers. Case 69, in which four Singapore shell companies incorporated by the same corporate service provider passed more than USD 8 million between one another, is a clear illustration.
What is placement in money laundering?
Placement is the first stage, in which criminal proceeds enter the financial system. The APG cases show it happening through cash deposits into benami or nominee accounts, mule account networks, cash-intensive businesses such as supermarkets, and purchases of high-value goods at merchants. Placement is where the funds are most vulnerable to detection, which is why controls at this stage carry disproportionate weight.
What is integration in money laundering?
Integration is the final stage, in which laundered funds re-enter the legitimate economy as apparently lawful wealth. The APG cases show integration into real estate purchases funded by cheque, construction of a four-star hotel through a company directed by a family member, gold and jewellery converted back to cash, and second-hand luxury vehicles.
What is structuring in money laundering?
Structuring is the deliberate breaking of a large transaction into smaller ones to stay below reporting thresholds or to avoid attracting attention. It appears as a tag on several APG cases, including the Singapore professional money launderer case. In practice it often presents as multiple deposits in one day followed by large withdrawals, a pattern explicitly noted in the Philippine offshore gaming operator analysis.
How do people launder money through shell companies?
The pattern across the APG cases is consistent. A company with no genuine operations is incorporated or purchased, funds are transferred into its account, then moved onward to a second company account, and finally converted into another asset such as crypto or real estate. What makes it work is the appearance of commercial purpose. What makes it detectable, as Case 69 shows, is that shell companies incorporated by the same agent tend to transact with one another and share counterparties.
Are these real money laundering cases or hypothetical examples?
They are real. Every case in this article was submitted by a national authority to the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and published in its Yearly Typologies Report 2025. Identifying details have been removed by the APG, but the figures, sequencing and outcomes are as reported by the submitting jurisdiction.
Why are the names and countries hidden in these case studies?
Because many of the cases involve ongoing investigations or judicial proceedings, or are otherwise operationally sensitive. Individuals appear as Person A, Person B and so on, and third-party jurisdictions as Jurisdiction X or Y. These labels are not consistent between cases, so Person A in one case study is a different individual from Person A in another.
What is the largest money laundering case in the APG 2025 report?
The Hong Kong Customs trade-based money laundering case, in which a transnational syndicate laundered approximately HKD 14 billion, around USD 1.8 billion, through purported exports of diamonds, precious stones and electronic products. It was Hong Kong Customs' largest ever money laundering case. Eight people were arrested and HKD 168 million, around USD 21.6 million, of assets were frozen.
What is trade based money laundering, with an example?
Trade based money laundering disguises criminal proceeds as trade payments, typically by misrepresenting the price, quantity or nature of goods. In the Hong Kong case above, funds were injected from overseas entities as payment for purported exports, and around HKD 2.9 billion of those apparently legitimate payments were later identified as proceeds of mobile application scams. The detection came from a mismatch between declared trade turnover and observable financial behaviour rather than from the documents themselves.
How do criminals use stablecoins such as USDT to launder money?
As a cross-border settlement rail rather than as an investment. In an Indonesian case, funds linked to a trafficking syndicate were used to buy USDT worth USD 295,373 through foreign virtual asset service providers, and part of that holding was liquidated on the same day, with the proceeds transferred back into Indonesian bank accounts by peer-to-peer transfer. The holding period was hours, which is the behavioural signature worth building a scenario around.
What role do lawyers and company secretaries play in money laundering?
In the APG case set they appear both as unwitting service providers and as active participants. Company secretaries incorporated the vehicles used in a Malaysian fake investment scheme that accumulated close to RM 200 million. A single corporate service provider incorporated all four shell companies in a Singapore case. In a Chinese Taipei case, 51 arrests included lawyers, police officers, household registration officers and land administration agents, meaning the professional roles were the operating model rather than an incidental weakness.
Can sanctions be evaded by changing ownership percentages?
The New Zealand case in the report suggests it is attempted. Following a restructure, a group's holding in the relevant company fell to 49%, just below a 50% threshold that would have deemed an associate to be a sanctioned person. Investigators were pursuing evidence of an additional 25.9% indirect holding that would have put effective ownership at 74.9%. Any control that depends on a bright-line percentage should be tested against this scenario.
Do any of these cases end in the money being recovered?
A minority do. The clearest is a business email compromise in which a Singapore company transferred USD 42.3 million to a fraudulent account. The fraud was reported on 23 July 2024 and USD 39.3 million was withheld the following day after the Singapore Police Force used INTERPOL's Global Rapid Intervention of Payments mechanism, ARIN-AP, FIU-to-FIU channels and mutual legal assistance in parallel. USD 39.3 million was returned to the victim.
How can I use these case studies for AML training?
They work well as scenario exercises because the outcome is known and the sequencing is documented. A useful format is to present the facts up to the point of detection, ask the group which control should have fired, then reveal what actually triggered the investigation. The charts and tables on this page may be reused for training under the attribution terms set out below.
Where can I find more money laundering case studies?
The APG publishes typologies reports annually at apgml.org. The Academy of Excellence in Financial Crime Investigation and Compliance at Griffith University maintains a public database of more than 10,000 case studies drawn from APG typologies products, mutual evaluation reports and related publications spanning over 20 years, which is the deeper archive if you need historical breadth. The FATF and other FATF-style regional bodies publish their own case collections.
References
All case studies in this article are drawn from reference [1]. Case numbers refer to the numbering used in that document. Links were checked on 9 August 2026.
[1] Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (2025) Yearly Typologies Report 2025: Methods and Trends of Money Laundering, Terrorism Financing and Proliferation Financing. November 2025. Case Studies 5, 6, 7, 8, 23, 36, 51, 55, 56, 69, 92, 98, 105 and 110. apgml.org/typologies/apg-typologies-reports
[2] Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (2026) Cyber Scam Hubs and Human Trafficking. Sydney, Australia, May 2026. Published 7 July 2026. Survey base: 17 public sector responses from 17 jurisdictions, 156 private sector responses from 14 jurisdictions, four blockchain analytics companies and one VASP. Includes Appendix A, Red Flag Indicators. Download the report (PDF)
[3] Financial Action Task Force. FATF Standards and Recommendations, including the placement, layering and integration framework and the definition of a typology. fatf-gafi.org
[4] Academy of Excellence in Financial Crime Investigation and Compliance, Griffith University. Public typologies database of more than 10,000 case studies, announced by the APG. apgml.org announcement
Chart and Data Reuse
The four charts in this article were produced by AML Guild from the published APG data. You may reproduce them free of charge, in commercial and non-commercial work, provided the conditions below are met.
- Credit the chart to AML Guild and include a link to this page.
- Carry the underlying data source with the chart. For example: Chart: AML Guild. Data: APG Yearly Typologies Report 2025.
- Do not alter the underlying values or remove the source line from the caption.
- Where a chart states a limitation, such as the illustrative case count in Figure 4, reproduce that limitation alongside it.
The case studies themselves are the property of the APG and the submitting jurisdictions. AML Guild claims no rights over them. The licence granted here covers the charts and the arrangement of material on this page only.
How to Cite This Page
Shah, P. (2026) Money Laundering Case Studies: 114 Real Examples from APG Members. AML Guild, 9 August 2026. Available at: amlguild.com/typologies/case-studies (Accessed: [your date]).
When citing an individual case, cite the APG report directly, for example: Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (2025) Yearly Typologies Report 2025, Case Study 23.
Disclosure and Verification
This article was written by Pathik Shah, Founder of NIYEAHMA Consultants LLP, and reviewed by the AML Guild expert panel named at the head of the page. AML Guild has no commercial relationship with the APG or with any jurisdiction that submitted a case study, and receives no funding from them. No part of this article was sponsored.
Case summaries were prepared from the source document rather than from secondary coverage, and every figure was re-checked against it. Figures and currency conversions are reproduced as stated in the source. If you find an error, write to info@amlguild.com. Corrections are made in place and recorded below.
Last updated 9 August 2026. Author: Pathik Shah, CAMS, FCA, CISA, CS, DISA (ICAI), FAFP (ICAI).
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