January 20 - Indian national Anurag Pramod Murarka has been sentenced to 121 months in prison in the U.S. for operating a global money laundering operation that funneled over $20 million in criminal proceeds. U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove delivered the sentence last Wednesday after Murarka was convicted of facilitating the laundering of criminal proceeds through a sophisticated operation involving crypto and a hawala system.

January 20 - An Ontario man is one of four men who are facing charges in connection to a fraud and money-laundering scheme, according to U.S. authorities as they also moved on four properties and more than $128 million. The Canadian teamed with three men from south of the border as the allegedly submitted bogus applications to U.S. financial institutions to get merchant processing accounts, according to the IRS. The group would use private personal information of unaware people which had been obtained under false pretenses in their bank applications.

January 20 - Minister Eelco Heinen of Finance wants banks to work together when checking transactions and customers for signs of money laundering. Parliament previously raised concerns of privacy violations in such controls. But banks’ current methods for guarding against money laundering are out of control and some sacrifices will have to be made, Heinen said in a letter to parliament in which he explained his vision for the financial sector, NOS reports. Money laundering checks cost banks 1.4 billion euros annually, Heinen wrote. Banks now jointly employ 13,000 people to monitor transactions and signal unusual patterns. That amounts to one in five bank employees focused only on detecting money laundering.

January 20 - On an unseasonably hot September day in 2023, a Surrey police officer spotted Daniel Cluett on an electric standup scooter, helmetless and allegedly riding into oncoming traffic. RCMP officers caught up with him outside the Lookout Shelter on 135A Avenue, where they alleged he was hanging with “other individuals in front of a No Loitering sign.”

January 17 - Toronto-Dominion Bank moved up the start date for its new chief executive officer, Raymond Chun, by two months and slashed executives’ pay in the wake of its historic and costly money-laundering scandal. The bank is also overhauling its board, which has faced criticism for its oversight of the lender’s US compliance program after it failed to stop drug cartels and other criminals from laundering hundreds of millions of dollars through several of Toronto-Dominion’s American branches for years.