What's the new weapon against money laundering gangsters? Smurfing.
BBC News Article: Money laundering, so-called after gangster Al Capone's practice of hiding criminal proceeds in cash-only laundromats in the 1920s, is a huge and growing problem.
"Dirty" money is "cleaned" by passing it through layers of seemingly legitimate banks and businesses and using it to buy properties, businesses, expensive cars, works of art - anything that can be sold on for new cash.
And one of the ways criminals do this is called "smurfing".
Specialist software is used to arrange lots of tiny bank deposits that slip below the radar, explains Mark Gazit, chief executive of ThetaRay, a financial crime AI provider headquartered in Israel.
"A $0.25 transaction will never be spotted by a human, but transactions of that kind can launder $30m if they are done hundreds of millions of times," he says.
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The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told the BBC it was working on "applied technical enhancements" to its armoury of crime-fighting tools to help it keep up with advances in financial tech, but remains understandably tight-lipped on the details.
However, other organisations are openly talking about their use of AI to fight the money launderers.
"AI that applies 'machine learning' can sift through vast quantities of transactions quickly and effectively," explains HSBC's Mr Bell.
"This could be a vital tool for pinpointing suspicious activity."
For this reason, AI is good at spotting smurfing attempts and accounts that are set up remotely by bots rather than humans, for example.
And it can also spot suspicious behaviour by corrupt insiders - a key element in many money laundering operations.
"Using AI removes much of the risk of people deliberately overlooking suspicious activity," says Adam Williamson, head of professional standards at the UK's Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) - a professional body tasked with helping accountants avoid money laundering.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47772362
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Real estate seems to be one of the favorite ways to move dirty money around.
Smurfing is just the technique to transfer the cash under the radar.
It would probably help to tighten up regs on shell corporations, too. 
