Think like a criminal to prevent financial crime, says specialist

Crime prevention expert Shamir Rajadurai called for a shift in approach to combat financial crime at a media roundtable in Kuala Lumpur. Rajadurai, speaking at the Intelligence-Led Financial Crime Prevention conference, urged institutions to move beyond tracking the latest scam tactics and instead delve into the criminal mind. He likened this to how businesses study customer behavior to develop products, suggesting that this would enable institutions to spot vulnerabilities in their systems and predict potential exploitation by criminals.

Rajadurai emphasized that the biggest issue is the current focus on tactics, with minimal attention on understanding the criminals themselves. He argued that institutions should adopt the mindset of criminal thinking, as demonstrated by his demonstration of bypassing sophisticated locks using simple methods. This approach should be applied to financial crime prevention, where compliance officers should question how criminals might circumvent existing controls, such as mule accounts.

Mule accounts, he explained, are a loophole that criminals exploit, knowing that banks cannot profile every customer entering the system. To close this loophole, banks need to identify how criminals bypass controls. Transparency International Malaysia's president, Raymon Ram, echoed this sentiment, stating that the organization is conducting research by interviewing convicted mule-account offenders in prisons.

The focus of this research is to understand the recruitment process, motivations, and awareness of consequences among mules. Ram highlighted that not all mules are fully aware they are acting as mules, and provided an example of university students being recruited through seemingly legitimate job opportunities to open bank accounts or enable online transfers.