Gloria was a young and ambitious woman.

For a couple of years she worked at a notary's office as a secretary, but whilst there she developed an aspiration to quit her job and began academic studies at the local university, in order to become a notary herself.

One day she met a new romantic interest called Grand. Gloria was very attracted to Grand, especially as he seemed to get on well with her young son. Grand and Gloria fell in love, and after a few weeks he moved in with her - they even had plans to get married. But whilst living with Grand, Gloria found out that her boyfriend was not the person that she had thought he was. Gloria knew that her partner did not earn his money with a normal office job. Some time later, he started to pressurise her to open several accounts in her name and to accept money deposited into the account by a number of individuals unknown to her.

When she asked where the money was coming from, Grand threatened her and her son with violence. In fear of her life, Gloria did as instructed and received over USD300,000 from an individual living in a European financial centre as her first transaction. Not long after that she received another USD60,000 from a lawyer living in the country where Grand had originally come from. After receipt of this money Gloria was forced by Grand to buy a house in a Southern European tourist centre. Grand identified the house to buy, and Gloria used a local notary to undertake the transaction.

The unusual fund movements through Gloria's accounts did not go unnoticed by the financial institutions concerned. The national FIU received a disclosure on the first transaction and after further investigation the analysts identified the second and subsequent transactions. In addition to these transactions, the FIU discovered that Gloria had another account over which a man named Nathan had joint control. Interestingly, the analysts discovered that 'Nathan' was the same person as 'Grand'. The FIU sent a copy of his identity documents to the FIU in Nathan's country of origin. This FIU did not find any records linked to either 'Nathan' or 'Grand', but by comparing different photos on different records they found out that Nathan/Grand had also undertaken financial transactions using the alias 'Fitzgerald'.

This last name was well known at to foreign FIU. Fitzgerald was involved in a large cannabis smuggling operation. His son Ferdinand headed up an important cannabis resin smuggling network. Ferdinand had recently been arrested for the illegal importation of 400 kg of cannabis resin. His legal representative turned out to be the lawyer who had sent the USD60,000 to Gloria's account.

At this point the FIU forwarded the case to the public prosecutor. The police force immediately tried to arrest Grand and Gloria, but Grand managed to escape during the police raids. During the interview with the police officers, Gloria told everything about her abusive relationship with Grand. The police released her without charge due to the violent coercion that had been used against her, but put a wiretap on her telephone line. When Grand tried to get in contact with Gloria, the police were able to trace and arrest him. Under interrogation, Grand alleged that the money in the European financial centre came from a tax evasion scheme related to a previous job - an attempt to escape the severe sentences possible for drug trafficking offences. At time of writing, Grand was still in custody awaiting trial on charges of laundering of drug smuggling proceeds.

Indicators:
Account activity atypical for account holder
Multiple account openings within narrow time scale
Unconnected parties channelling funds to a single account