New financial crime guides will help business to identify and stop criminal activity in its tracks. These guides provide you with patterns and indicators to understand, identify and report suspicious financial activity for a range of serious and organised crimes.

Preventing the exploitation of emergency and disaster support payments

This guide details indicators of potential fraud and misuse of taxpayer funds through Services Australia administered emergency and disaster payments. Financial indicators include blacklisted profiles or a newly created account with minimal activity receiving support payments, or the unusual movement of money such as the cash withdrawal of all funds.

Download the guide: Financial crime guide – Preventing the exploitation of emergency and disaster support payments (PDF, 1.8 MB) 

Preventing technological abuse through payment text fields

Increasingly, payment text fields are being used for the purpose of stalking, harassing and threatening victims and as a way for criminals to attempt to communicate with each other and avoid police scrutiny, rather than for the transfer funds. Messages that seem legitimate may appear threatening or suspicious when combined with financial indicators such as the high volume and frequency of low value payments.

Download the guide: Financial crime guide - Preventing misuse and criminal communication through payment text fields (PDF, 398KB)

What you need to do

Use the indicators provided in these reports to identify if you need to carry out additional customer checks (Enhanced Customer Due Diligence) and if a suspicious matter report (SMR) needs to be submitted to AUSTRAC.

For more information on SMRs and your reporting obligations, please see the suspicious matter reports page.