The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network received approximately 4.6 million suspicious activity reports in fiscal year 2023, for an average of 12,600 reports a day, the agency said today in its year-in-review report. The report provides an overview of FinCEN’s collection and use of Bank Secrecy Act data, including its work with law enforcement and national security agencies. Among other things, the report shows that more than half of SARs filed in FY 2023—some 2.5 million reports—came from depository institutions. The agency also received 20.8 million currency transaction reports in that same time frame, for an average of 57,000 reports a day. Depository institutions provided the majority of CTRs, at 17.6 million.
More than 85% of investigations that the IRS-Criminal Investigation recommended for prosecution over the past two years concerned a primary subject with a related BSA filing, according to the report. Nearly 14% of all IRS-CI investigations in FY 2023 originated from BSA data. At the same time, more than 15% of active FBI investigations were linked to SARs and CTRs. Regarding the type of activity reported in SARs, approximately 1.75 million reports related to fraud, 1.63 million related to money laundering and 1.31 million related to structuring, although the largest category was “other suspicious activity” potentially identified by financial institutions at 3.17 million reports.
