Disrupting Illicit Supply Networks: New Applications of Operations Research and Data Analytics to End Modern Slavery

Report from a 2017 National Science Foundation workshop on promising research directions for applications of operations research and data analytics toward the disruption of illicit supply networks like human trafficking. The workshop was funded by the NSF’s Operations Engineering (ENG) and the Law & Social Sciences Program (SBE) under grant # CMMI-1726895. The report addresses the opportunity to apply advances from the fields of operations research, management science, analytics, machine learning, and data science toward the development of disruptive interventions against illicit networks. Such an extension of the current research agenda for trafficking would move understanding of such dynamic systems from descriptive characterization and predictive estimation toward improved dynamic operational control.Bureau of Business Researc

The geography of pre-criminal space : epidemiological imaginations of radicalisation risk in the UK prevent strategy, 2007-2017

This article explores geographical and epistemological shifts in the deployment of the UK Prevent strategy, 2007–2017. Counter-radicalisation policies of the Labour governments (2006–2010) focused heavily upon resilience-building activities in residential communities. They borrowed from historical models of crime prevention and public health to imagine radicalisation risk as an epidemiological concern in areas showing a 2% or higher demography of Muslims. However, this racialised and localised imagination of pre-criminal space was replaced after the election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010. Residential communities were then de-emphasised as sites of risk, transmission and pre-criminal intervention. The Prevent Duty now deploys counter-radicalisation through national networks of education and health-care provision. Localised models of crime prevention (and their statistical, crime prevention epistemologies) have been de-emphasised in favour of big data inflected epistemologies of inductive, population-wide “safeguarding”. Through the biopolitical discourse of “safeguarding vulnerable adults”, the Prevent Duty has radically reconstituted the epidemiological imagination of pre-criminal space, imagining that all bodies are potentially vulnerable to infection by radicalisers and thus warrant surveillance

Erosion Of Credibility: A Mixed Methods Evaluation of Twitter News Headlines from The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, And USA Today

To entice and commodify social media news consumers, contemporary news organizations have increasingly relied on data analytics to boost audience engagement. Clicks, likes, and shares are the metrics that now guide the editorial process and shape decisions about content and coverage. As such, news headlines are regularly manipulated to attract the attention of those who quickly scroll through social media networks on computers and smartphones. However, few studies have examined the typologies of news content most likely to be manipulated in social media news headlines or the impact of news headline manipulation on news source credibility. For this research, source credibility theory has been updated for a practical application of today’s social media news landscape and used as a lens to examine the phenomenon, its impact on audience engagement, and association with traditional standards of journalism and credibility. A mixed methods content analysis was conducted of news headlines published on Twitter compared to headlines and content published on the websites of five traditional newspapers: the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. The results indicated that the typologies of news most likely to be manipulated for Twitter publication (opinion, politics, health/medical), were also the least credible. Conversely, typologies of news that were least likely to be manipulated for Twitter publication (international, consumer, disaster), were rated the most credible

Topology-Agnostic Detection of Temporal Money Laundering Flows in Billion-Scale Transactions

Money launderers exploit the weaknesses in detection systems by purposefully placing their ill-gotten money into multiple accounts, at different banks. That money is then layered and moved around among mule accounts to obscure the origin and the flow of transactions. Consequently, the money is integrated into the financial system without raising suspicion. Path finding algorithms that aim at tracking suspicious flows of money usually struggle with scale and complexity. Existing community detection techniques also fail to properly capture the time-dependent relationships. This is particularly evident when performing analytics over massive transaction graphs. We propose a framework (called FaSTMAN), adapted for domain-specific constraints, to efficiently construct a temporal graph of sequential transactions. The framework includes a weighting method, using 2nd order graph representation, to quantify the significance of the edges. This method enables us to distribute complex queries on smaller and densely connected networks of flows. Finally, based on those queries, we can effectively identify networks of suspicious flows. We extensively evaluate the scalability and the effectiveness of our framework against two state-of-the-art solutions for detecting suspicious flows of transactions. For a dataset of over 1 Billion transactions from multiple large European banks, the results show a clear superiority of our framework both in efficiency and usefulness

Human-Centered Approaches in Urban Analytics and Placemaking

Planning for resilience and enabling positive design outcomes require combinatory methods of working with data, in order to assist decision-makers to develop evidence-based methodologies and to communicate new knowledge. The staggering rise of technology and the integration of data-aided analysis tools in urban planning not only facilitates our understanding of socioeconomic flux but also attempts to actively involve users to participate in the creation of environments that are responsive and appropriate to their needs. This chapter aims to contribute to the discourse on user involvement in design-oriented fields, and specifically in urban planning, by analyzing two different approaches of user participatory design, those of indirect and direct participation

Unwanted entailments of the current EU AML/CFT regime

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Law and Financial MarketsA presente tese visa investigar, de forma pragmática, a batalha contra o financiamento do terrorismo e o branqueamento de capitais no contexto do quadro europeu existente, bem como algumas das suas repercussões indesejadas. Para atingir esse objetivo, foi dada uma elucidação abrangente de todo o processo. A investigação, a acusação e a punição de todas as formas de enriquecimento ilícito estão atualmente em voga, bem como, sem dúvida, o financiamento do terrorismo. A monitorização das transações recebeu uma ênfase especial porque é a génese de alertas automatizados de atividades invulgares, dentro de um esquema complexo de relatórios. Foi utilizada uma abordagem técnica do instrumento, especialmente para ilustrar os custos de contingência e prudenciais esperados das instituições financeiras. Os determinantes dos fatores de risco num dado contexto também estavam sob escrutínio, bem como a necessidade de transparência num dado sistema. A tese também elucidou a incongruência de questões de aparente interesse público, nomeadamente a prevenção do branqueamento de capitais e financiamento do terrorismo e as suas reflexões negativas na proteção do consumidor e na integração financeira.The current thesis aimed to pragmatically investigate the battle against terrorism financing and money laundering in the context of the existing European framework, as well as some of its unintended repercussions. To achieve that goal, a comprehensive elucidation of the whole process was given. Investigation, prosecution, and punishment of all forms of illicit enrichment are currently in vogue., as well as, undoubtedly, the financing of terrorism. Transaction monitoring was given a special emphasis because it is the genesis of automated alerts of unusual activities, within a complex reporting scheme. A technical approach of the tool was utilized, especially to illustrate the contingency and prudential costs expected of financial institutions. The determinants of risk factors in given context were also under scrutiny, so was the need for transparency in given system. The thesis also elucidated the incongruity of two seemly public interest matters ML-FT prevention and its negative reflections in consumer protection and financial integration

Digital neighborhoods

With the advent of ‘big data’ there is an increased interest in using social media to describe city dynamics. This paper employs geo-located social media data to identify ‘digital neighborhoods’ – those areas in the city where social media is used more often. Starting with geo-located Twitter and Foursquare data for the New York City region in 2014, we applied spatial clustering techniques to detect significant groupings or ‘neighborhoods’ where social media use is high or low. The results show that beyond the business districts, digital neighborhoods occur in communities undergoing shifting socio-demographics. Neighborhoods that are not digitally oriented tend to have higher proportion of minorities and lower incomes, highlighting a social–economic divide in how social media is used in the city. Understanding the differences in these neighborhoods can help city planners interested in generating economic development proposals, civic engagement strategies, and urban design ideas that target these areas

Exploring political risk in offshoring engagements

This research focuses on the analysis of political risk in the context of offshoring decisions. The study uses the Repertory Grid Technique, which entails a series of semi-structured interviews exploring key political risk experiences across offshoring engagements. The research extends the spectrum of political risk analysis in the context of offshoring engagements, and explores the varied impact of political risk across business activity types. The research identifies five key political risks affecting offshoring engagements and highlights the moderating effect of specific offshoring activity types Business Process Outsourcing, Information Technology Outsourcing or Knowledge Process Outsourcing on political risk implications. The research explores the conditioning effect of activity specific exposure to political risk and enhances the explanatory ability of the Transaction Cost Economics constructs, offering a novel operationalisation of the political risk component of external uncertainty. From a practical perspective, the research highlights the need for developing managerial tools to improve monitoring and identification of risks. The key practical contribution is the development of differentiated political risk typologies that can capture the nuances of external risks in offshoring, allowing for more accurate risk assessment of offshoring decisions

Money laundering, issues, effects of bank fraud and corruption and role of internal audit

Λαμβάνοντας υπόψη τις αλληλεξαρτήσεις στις σημερινές αγορές, είναι πολύ πιθανό μία εταιρεία συνεργάζεται με μια εταιρεία που δεν διαχειρίζεται αποτελεσματικά τους κινδύνους απάτης, διαφθοράς και να έχει ανήθικη επιχειρηματική συμπεριφορά. Αυτή είναι επικίνδυνη επιχείρηση. Η πίεση για επίτευξη ανάπτυξης και νέες ευκαιρίες εσόδων οδηγούν ομάδες και άτομα προς αυτούς τους κινδύνους και τους ωθούν στην ανήθικη συμπεριφορά τους. Από την άλλη πλευρά, η απειλή του εγκλήματος στον κυβερνοχώρο για τα άτομα, τις τράπεζες και άλλους διαδικτυακούς πάροχους χρηματοοικονομικών υπηρεσιών είναι πραγματικοί και σοβαροί. Μέσω του ηλεκτρονικού ψαρέματος, τα ανυποψίαστα ονόματα και τα διαπιστευτήρια σύνδεσης στο Internet banking των θυμάτων έχουν κλαπεί και οι δικοί τους λογαριασμοί ληστεύτηκαν. Στην αντιμετώπιση αυτού του ζητήματος, οι εμπορικές τράπεζες και άλλα χρηματοπιστωτικά ιδρύματα χρησιμοποιούν μια γενετικά παρόμοια προσέγγιση στα συστήματα εντοπισμού απάτης μέσω διαδικτυακών τραπεζών. Τα συστήματα εντοπισμού απάτης που χρησιμοποιούνται από τις τράπεζες έχουν διάφορους περιορισμούς που επηρεάζουν την αποτελεσματικότητά τους με στόχο τον περιορισμό παράνομων συναλλαγών σε διαδικτυακές τραπεζικές συναλλαγές.Given the interdependencies in today’s markets, it is extremely likely that somewhere doing business with a company that is not effectively managing the risks of fraud, corruption, and other unethical business conduct. That is risky business. The pressure to achieve growth and develop new revenue opportunities is driving teams and individuals toward these risks and pushing them to unethical behavior themselves. On the other side, the threat posed by cybercrime to individuals, banks and other online financial service providers is real and serious. Through phishing, unsuspecting victims’ Internet banking usernames and log in credentials are stolen and their accounts robbed. In addressing this issue, commercial banks and other financial institutions use a genetically similar approach in their Internet banking fraud detection systems. Internet banking fraud detection systems used by banks have several limitations that affect their efficiency in curbing fraudulent transactions in online banking. Firstly, the banks’ security systems are focused on preventing unauthorized entry and have no way of conclusively detecting an imposter using stolen credentials. Also, updating these systems is slow and their maintenance is labor-intensive and ultimately costly to the business. A major limitation of these rule-bases is brittleness; an inability to recognize the limits of their knowledge. In the main part of this thesis, we highlight the importance of looking at the “big risk picture” of the incident response process, and not just focusing on one technology at a time, we will deal with the issue of Money Laundering (ML). The abilities and skills of internal auditors suit them well for the war against money laundering. Forensic accounting skills, as well as audit expertise, are needed to help in combating this crime. The development of internal policies, procedures, and controls to prevent money laundering fits within the accountant's abilities and expertise. Money laundering can be defined as a process in which illegally obtained money (e.g. from drug trafficking, terrorist activity or other serious crimes) is given an appearance of having originated from a legitimate source. Money laundering is now taking place, only, in a high-tech global environment. Money laundering represents a derivative form of crime. This research will provide background and recent developments in efforts to combat money laundering, as well. We will try to compare the current combat between USA and European authorities, regulators, and processes. Finally, we will present two examples of Bank fraud cases/scandals which forced the American and European boards to revise, ensure and empower the audit lines, immediately