Think like a criminal to prevent financial crime, says specialist

Crime prevention specialist Shamir Rajadurai today urged institutions to stop focusing solely on the latest scam tactics and instead understand how criminals think.

Speaking at a media roundtable in conjunction with a conference here, Shamir said institutions should study criminals’ thought processes in the same way that businesses study their customers when developing products.

He said this would allow institutions to identify weaknesses in their systems and anticipate how criminals might exploit them.

“The biggest problem is that we are always focusing on the tactic. We’re like, okay, what’s happening now? What’s happening next? We don’t focus on the criminal, and that’s the biggest problem.

“Everyone is only focusing on the data that they’ve received. They’re not looking back and thinking, no, I need to start thinking like a criminal,” he said at the Intelligence-Led Financial Crime Prevention: The Power of Data, Insights and Collaboration conference.

Citing his experience in demonstrating how seemingly sophisticated locks can be bypassed using simple methods, Shamir said the same approach should be applied to financial crime prevention, where compliance officers should ask how criminals can circumvent existing controls.

He gave the example of mule accounts, saying criminals know that banks cannot simply profile every customer entering the system.

“If I’m a criminal, I understand that’s my loophole. As a bank, you need to figure out how to close that loophole,” he said.

Meanwhile, Transparency International Malaysia president Raymon Ram said the organisation was interviewing convicted mule-account offenders in prisons to better understand how they were recruited and why they became involved.

Raymon said the research focused on understanding how people were recruited, why they agreed to participate and whether they understood the consequences of becoming a mule.

“Not all mules know that they are mules,” he added.

Giving the example of university students, he said they could be approached through what appeared to be legitimate job opportunities, and asked to open bank accounts or allow their accounts to be used for online bank transfers.

“They think that it’s a job opportunity for students,” he said.

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