Angela Irwin - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Angela Irwin
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-fol... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-follow, visual representation of the important characteristics and aspects of money laundering behaviours extracted from real-world money laundering and terrorism financing typologies. Design/methodology/approach -In total, 184 typologies were obtained from a number of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) bodies to determine the common patterns and themes present in the cases involved. Financial flows, transactions and interactions between entities were extracted from each of the typologies and modelled using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) features within Microsoft Visio. Findings -The paper demonstrates how complex transactional flows and interactions between the different entities involved in a money laundering and terrorism financing case can be shown in an easy-to-follow graphical representation, allowing practitioners to more easily and quickly extract the relevant information from the typology, as opposed to reading a full text-based description. In addition, these models make it easier to discover trends and patterns present within and across Types and allow money laundering and terrorism financing typologies to be updated and published to the wider international AML/CTF community, as and when new trends and behaviours become apparent. Originality/value -A set of models have been produced that can be extended every time a new scenario, typology or Type arises. These models can be held in a central repository that can be added to and updated by AML/CTF practitioners and can be referred to by practitioners to help them identify whether the case that they are dealing with fits already predefined money laundering and terrorism financing behaviours, or whether a new behaviour has been discovered. These models may also be useful for the development of money laundering and terrorism financing detection tools and the training of new analysts or practitioners. The authors believe that their work goes some way to addressing the current lack of formal methods and techniques for identifying and developing uniform procedures for describing, classifying and sharing new money laundering and terrorism financing with the international AML/CTF community, as and when they happen, in a simple but effective manner.
This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, m... more This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, managing and maintaining an effective Know Your Customer (KYC), Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Customer Identification Program (CIP); as well as the future of money laundering and terrorist financing risk management with a focus on technologies.
This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, m... more This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, managing and maintaining an effective Know Your Customer (KYC), Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Customer Identification Program (CIP); as well as the future of money laundering and terrorist financing risk management with a focus on technologies.
Money laundering and terrorism financing: a feasibility study
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to measure the size of the money laundering and terrorism f... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to measure the size of the money laundering and terrorism financing problem, identify threats and trends, the techniques employed and the amount of funds involved to determine whether the information obtained about money laundering and terrorism financing in real-world environments can be transferred to virtual environments such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. Design/methodology/approach -Analysis of 184 Typologies obtained from a number of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) bodies to: determine whether trends and/or patterns can be identified in the different phases of money laundering or terrorism financing, namely, the placement, layering and integration phases; and to establish whether trends and/or behaviours are ubiquitous to a particular money laundering or terrorism financing Type. Findings -Money launderers and terrorism financers appeared to have slightly different preferences for the placement, layering and integration techniques. The more techniques that are used, the more cash can be successfully laundered or concealed. Although terrorism financers use similar channels to money launderers, they do not utilise as many of the placement, layering and integration techniques. Rather, they prefer to use a few techniques which maintain high levels of anonymity and appear innocuous. The sums of monies involved in money laundering and terrorism financing vary significantly. For example, the average maximum sum involved in money laundering cases was AUD 68.5M, as compared to AUD 4.8 for terrorism financing cases. Originality/value -This paper provides some insight into the relationship between predicate offence, the predominant techniques utilised in carrying out that offence and the sums of money involved.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2013
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the identity and payment method verification pro... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the identity and payment method verification procedures implemented by a number of popular massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and online financial service providers (OFSPs) to determine if the systems they currently have in place are sufficient to uncover the identities of those who may wish to use such environments to conduct money laundering or terrorism financing activity. Design/methodology/approach -The paper investigates whether the payment instruments or methods used by account holders to place funds into their account(s) hinder or assist investigators to expose the real-world identity of the account holder. The paper then discusses whether it is feasible and/or desirable to introduce know your customer (KYC) and customer due diligence (CDD) legislation into virtual environments and illustrates an effective KYC approach which may assist MMOGs and OFSPs to correctly identify their account holders, should legislation be put in place. Findings -The systems currently in place by all of the MMOGs investigated are wholly inadequate to successfully establish the real-world identities of account holders. None of the information required at the account setup stage is verified and, therefore, cannot be reliably associated with an account holder in a real-world context. It appears that all three of the MMOGs investigated are leaving the serious matter of identity and payment method verification to the organisations that assist in the sale and purchase of their in-world currency such as third party currency exchanges and Internet payment systems (collectively referred to as OFSPs). However, many of these OFSPs do not have adequate systems in place to successfully verify the identities of their account holders or users either. The authors' experiments show that it can be a very simple process to open accounts and perform financial transactions with all of the OFSPs investigated using publicly available or fictitious identity information and a prepaid Visaw gift card. Although all five OFSPs investigated in this research claim to verify the identity of their account holders, and may already be subject to KYC and CDD legislation, their systems may need some work to ensure that an account holder or user is accurately identified before financial transactions can take place. Originality/value -The authors believe that the electronic KYC approach discussed in this paper deals effectively with the challenges of global reach, anonymity and non-face-to-face business relationships experienced by virtual environment operators, thereby assisting in the effective detection and possible prosecution of individuals who wish to use these platforms for illicit and illegal purposes.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-fol... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-follow, visual representation of the important characteristics and aspects of money laundering behaviours extracted from real-world money laundering and terrorism financing typologies. Design/methodology/approach -In total, 184 typologies were obtained from a number of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) bodies to determine the common patterns and themes present in the cases involved. Financial flows, transactions and interactions between entities were extracted from each of the typologies and modelled using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) features within Microsoft Visio. Findings -The paper demonstrates how complex transactional flows and interactions between the different entities involved in a money laundering and terrorism financing case can be shown in an easy-to-follow graphical representation, allowing practitioners to more easily and quickly extract the relevant information from the typology, as opposed to reading a full text-based description. In addition, these models make it easier to discover trends and patterns present within and across Types and allow money laundering and terrorism financing typologies to be updated and published to the wider international AML/CTF community, as and when new trends and behaviours become apparent. Originality/value -A set of models have been produced that can be extended every time a new scenario, typology or Type arises. These models can be held in a central repository that can be added to and updated by AML/CTF practitioners and can be referred to by practitioners to help them identify whether the case that they are dealing with fits already predefined money laundering and terrorism financing behaviours, or whether a new behaviour has been discovered. These models may also be useful for the development of money laundering and terrorism financing detection tools and the training of new analysts or practitioners. The authors believe that their work goes some way to addressing the current lack of formal methods and techniques for identifying and developing uniform procedures for describing, classifying and sharing new money laundering and terrorism financing with the international AML/CTF community, as and when they happen, in a simple but effective manner.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2014
Purpose -There is a clear consensus of opinion that virtual environments and virtual currencies p... more Purpose -There is a clear consensus of opinion that virtual environments and virtual currencies pose a money laundering and terrorism financing threat. What is less clear, however, is the level of risk that they pose. This paper aims to clarify the suitability of virtual environments for conducting money laundering and terrorism financing activities. Design/methodology/approach -A number of experiments were conducted to estimate the quantity of funds that could be moved through these environments. These experiments took into account a number of factors such as the number of accounts that would need to be opened to launder/raise a specific amount of funds, the amount of funds that could be placed within a certain timeframe and the transaction limits imposed by each of the massively multiplayer online games and online financial service providers involved in the money laundering and terrorism financing scenarios.
In recent years there has been much debate about the risks posed by virtual environments. Concern... more In recent years there has been much debate about the risks posed by virtual environments. Concern is growing about the ease in which virtual worlds and virtual reality role-playing games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft can be used for economic crimes such as financially motivated cybercrime, money laundering and terrorism financing. Currently, virtual environments are not subject to the strict financial controls and reporting requirements of the real world, therefore, they offer an excellent opportunity for criminals and terrorism financers to carry out their illegal activities unhindered and with impunity. This paper demonstrates the need for suitable approaches, tools and techniques which can be used to detect money laundering and terrorism financing in virtual environments and introduces a research project which aims to establish a comprehensive set of behaviour maps, rule bases and models to help in the fight against organised crime and terrorism.
Conventional security mechanisms providing confidentiality, integrity and authentication are faci... more Conventional security mechanisms providing confidentiality, integrity and authentication are facing new challenges in modern wired and wireless networks. Deniable encryption allows encrypted data to be decrypted to different sensible plaintexts, depending on the key used or otherwise makes it impossible to prove the existence of the real message without the proper encryption key. This allows the sender to have plausible deniability if compelled to give up their encryption key. Deniable file systems allow for the creation of an encrypted volume on a hard disk and a second, hidden deniable file system created inside with access by a second password. The objective of this research is to establish whether or not evidence of a hidden volume can be found in deniable encryption tools using conventional forensic analysis. A testbed is developed using open source deniable encryption software and forensics tools with the objective of proving or disproving this claim.
Telecommunication Systems
Recent advances in hardware, software, and communication technologies are enabling the design and... more Recent advances in hardware, software, and communication technologies are enabling the design and implementation of a whole range of different types of networks that are being deployed in various environments. One such network that has received a lot of interest in the last couple of years is the Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET). VANET has become an active area of research, standardization, and development because it has tremendous potential to improve vehicle and road safety, traffic efficiency, and convenience as well as comfort to both drivers and passengers. Recent research efforts have placed a strong emphasis on novel VANET design architectures and implementations. A lot of VANET research work have focused on specific areas including routing, broadcasting, Quality of Service (QoS), and security. We survey some of the recent research results in these areas. We present a review of wireless access standards for VANETs, and describe some of the recent VANET trials and deployments in the US, Japan, and the European Union. In addition, we also briefly present some of the simulators currently available to VANET researchers for VANET simulations and we assess their benefits and limitations. Finally, we outline some of the VANET research challenges that still need to be addressed to enable the ubiquitous deployment and widespead adoption of scalable, reliable, robust, and secure VANET architectures, protocols, technologies, and services.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-fol... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-follow, visual representation of the important characteristics and aspects of money laundering behaviours extracted from real-world money laundering and terrorism financing typologies. Design/methodology/approach -In total, 184 typologies were obtained from a number of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) bodies to determine the common patterns and themes present in the cases involved. Financial flows, transactions and interactions between entities were extracted from each of the typologies and modelled using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) features within Microsoft Visio. Findings -The paper demonstrates how complex transactional flows and interactions between the different entities involved in a money laundering and terrorism financing case can be shown in an easy-to-follow graphical representation, allowing practitioners to more easily and quickly extract the relevant information from the typology, as opposed to reading a full text-based description. In addition, these models make it easier to discover trends and patterns present within and across Types and allow money laundering and terrorism financing typologies to be updated and published to the wider international AML/CTF community, as and when new trends and behaviours become apparent. Originality/value -A set of models have been produced that can be extended every time a new scenario, typology or Type arises. These models can be held in a central repository that can be added to and updated by AML/CTF practitioners and can be referred to by practitioners to help them identify whether the case that they are dealing with fits already predefined money laundering and terrorism financing behaviours, or whether a new behaviour has been discovered. These models may also be useful for the development of money laundering and terrorism financing detection tools and the training of new analysts or practitioners. The authors believe that their work goes some way to addressing the current lack of formal methods and techniques for identifying and developing uniform procedures for describing, classifying and sharing new money laundering and terrorism financing with the international AML/CTF community, as and when they happen, in a simple but effective manner.
This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, m... more This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, managing and maintaining an effective Know Your Customer (KYC), Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Customer Identification Program (CIP); as well as the future of money laundering and terrorist financing risk management with a focus on technologies.
This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, m... more This paper examines the technological challenges faced by financial institutions in setting up, managing and maintaining an effective Know Your Customer (KYC), Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Customer Identification Program (CIP); as well as the future of money laundering and terrorist financing risk management with a focus on technologies.
Money laundering and terrorism financing: a feasibility study
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to measure the size of the money laundering and terrorism f... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to measure the size of the money laundering and terrorism financing problem, identify threats and trends, the techniques employed and the amount of funds involved to determine whether the information obtained about money laundering and terrorism financing in real-world environments can be transferred to virtual environments such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. Design/methodology/approach -Analysis of 184 Typologies obtained from a number of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) bodies to: determine whether trends and/or patterns can be identified in the different phases of money laundering or terrorism financing, namely, the placement, layering and integration phases; and to establish whether trends and/or behaviours are ubiquitous to a particular money laundering or terrorism financing Type. Findings -Money launderers and terrorism financers appeared to have slightly different preferences for the placement, layering and integration techniques. The more techniques that are used, the more cash can be successfully laundered or concealed. Although terrorism financers use similar channels to money launderers, they do not utilise as many of the placement, layering and integration techniques. Rather, they prefer to use a few techniques which maintain high levels of anonymity and appear innocuous. The sums of monies involved in money laundering and terrorism financing vary significantly. For example, the average maximum sum involved in money laundering cases was AUD 68.5M, as compared to AUD 4.8 for terrorism financing cases. Originality/value -This paper provides some insight into the relationship between predicate offence, the predominant techniques utilised in carrying out that offence and the sums of money involved.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2013
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the identity and payment method verification pro... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the identity and payment method verification procedures implemented by a number of popular massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and online financial service providers (OFSPs) to determine if the systems they currently have in place are sufficient to uncover the identities of those who may wish to use such environments to conduct money laundering or terrorism financing activity. Design/methodology/approach -The paper investigates whether the payment instruments or methods used by account holders to place funds into their account(s) hinder or assist investigators to expose the real-world identity of the account holder. The paper then discusses whether it is feasible and/or desirable to introduce know your customer (KYC) and customer due diligence (CDD) legislation into virtual environments and illustrates an effective KYC approach which may assist MMOGs and OFSPs to correctly identify their account holders, should legislation be put in place. Findings -The systems currently in place by all of the MMOGs investigated are wholly inadequate to successfully establish the real-world identities of account holders. None of the information required at the account setup stage is verified and, therefore, cannot be reliably associated with an account holder in a real-world context. It appears that all three of the MMOGs investigated are leaving the serious matter of identity and payment method verification to the organisations that assist in the sale and purchase of their in-world currency such as third party currency exchanges and Internet payment systems (collectively referred to as OFSPs). However, many of these OFSPs do not have adequate systems in place to successfully verify the identities of their account holders or users either. The authors' experiments show that it can be a very simple process to open accounts and perform financial transactions with all of the OFSPs investigated using publicly available or fictitious identity information and a prepaid Visaw gift card. Although all five OFSPs investigated in this research claim to verify the identity of their account holders, and may already be subject to KYC and CDD legislation, their systems may need some work to ensure that an account holder or user is accurately identified before financial transactions can take place. Originality/value -The authors believe that the electronic KYC approach discussed in this paper deals effectively with the challenges of global reach, anonymity and non-face-to-face business relationships experienced by virtual environment operators, thereby assisting in the effective detection and possible prosecution of individuals who wish to use these platforms for illicit and illegal purposes.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-fol... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to show how modelling can be used to provide an easy-to-follow, visual representation of the important characteristics and aspects of money laundering behaviours extracted from real-world money laundering and terrorism financing typologies. Design/methodology/approach -In total, 184 typologies were obtained from a number of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) bodies to determine the common patterns and themes present in the cases involved. Financial flows, transactions and interactions between entities were extracted from each of the typologies and modelled using the Unified Modelling Language (UML) features within Microsoft Visio. Findings -The paper demonstrates how complex transactional flows and interactions between the different entities involved in a money laundering and terrorism financing case can be shown in an easy-to-follow graphical representation, allowing practitioners to more easily and quickly extract the relevant information from the typology, as opposed to reading a full text-based description. In addition, these models make it easier to discover trends and patterns present within and across Types and allow money laundering and terrorism financing typologies to be updated and published to the wider international AML/CTF community, as and when new trends and behaviours become apparent. Originality/value -A set of models have been produced that can be extended every time a new scenario, typology or Type arises. These models can be held in a central repository that can be added to and updated by AML/CTF practitioners and can be referred to by practitioners to help them identify whether the case that they are dealing with fits already predefined money laundering and terrorism financing behaviours, or whether a new behaviour has been discovered. These models may also be useful for the development of money laundering and terrorism financing detection tools and the training of new analysts or practitioners. The authors believe that their work goes some way to addressing the current lack of formal methods and techniques for identifying and developing uniform procedures for describing, classifying and sharing new money laundering and terrorism financing with the international AML/CTF community, as and when they happen, in a simple but effective manner.
Journal of Money Laundering Control, 2014
Purpose -There is a clear consensus of opinion that virtual environments and virtual currencies p... more Purpose -There is a clear consensus of opinion that virtual environments and virtual currencies pose a money laundering and terrorism financing threat. What is less clear, however, is the level of risk that they pose. This paper aims to clarify the suitability of virtual environments for conducting money laundering and terrorism financing activities. Design/methodology/approach -A number of experiments were conducted to estimate the quantity of funds that could be moved through these environments. These experiments took into account a number of factors such as the number of accounts that would need to be opened to launder/raise a specific amount of funds, the amount of funds that could be placed within a certain timeframe and the transaction limits imposed by each of the massively multiplayer online games and online financial service providers involved in the money laundering and terrorism financing scenarios.
In recent years there has been much debate about the risks posed by virtual environments. Concern... more In recent years there has been much debate about the risks posed by virtual environments. Concern is growing about the ease in which virtual worlds and virtual reality role-playing games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft can be used for economic crimes such as financially motivated cybercrime, money laundering and terrorism financing. Currently, virtual environments are not subject to the strict financial controls and reporting requirements of the real world, therefore, they offer an excellent opportunity for criminals and terrorism financers to carry out their illegal activities unhindered and with impunity. This paper demonstrates the need for suitable approaches, tools and techniques which can be used to detect money laundering and terrorism financing in virtual environments and introduces a research project which aims to establish a comprehensive set of behaviour maps, rule bases and models to help in the fight against organised crime and terrorism.
Conventional security mechanisms providing confidentiality, integrity and authentication are faci... more Conventional security mechanisms providing confidentiality, integrity and authentication are facing new challenges in modern wired and wireless networks. Deniable encryption allows encrypted data to be decrypted to different sensible plaintexts, depending on the key used or otherwise makes it impossible to prove the existence of the real message without the proper encryption key. This allows the sender to have plausible deniability if compelled to give up their encryption key. Deniable file systems allow for the creation of an encrypted volume on a hard disk and a second, hidden deniable file system created inside with access by a second password. The objective of this research is to establish whether or not evidence of a hidden volume can be found in deniable encryption tools using conventional forensic analysis. A testbed is developed using open source deniable encryption software and forensics tools with the objective of proving or disproving this claim.
Telecommunication Systems
Recent advances in hardware, software, and communication technologies are enabling the design and... more Recent advances in hardware, software, and communication technologies are enabling the design and implementation of a whole range of different types of networks that are being deployed in various environments. One such network that has received a lot of interest in the last couple of years is the Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET). VANET has become an active area of research, standardization, and development because it has tremendous potential to improve vehicle and road safety, traffic efficiency, and convenience as well as comfort to both drivers and passengers. Recent research efforts have placed a strong emphasis on novel VANET design architectures and implementations. A lot of VANET research work have focused on specific areas including routing, broadcasting, Quality of Service (QoS), and security. We survey some of the recent research results in these areas. We present a review of wireless access standards for VANETs, and describe some of the recent VANET trials and deployments in the US, Japan, and the European Union. In addition, we also briefly present some of the simulators currently available to VANET researchers for VANET simulations and we assess their benefits and limitations. Finally, we outline some of the VANET research challenges that still need to be addressed to enable the ubiquitous deployment and widespead adoption of scalable, reliable, robust, and secure VANET architectures, protocols, technologies, and services.