People may resort to illegal activities to finance a gambling addiction; money earned illegally may be used for gambling as a form of consumption; or the gambling industry may be used to obscure the provenance of such money. There are examples of banknotes in large denominations being exchanged for gambling tokens, for instance, and the tokens then scarcely being used for gambling but rather cashed in again with a specific request for small denominations. This kind of behaviour is not so much a matter of gambling as of changing money.

At the same time, for some people spending the illicit proceeds of their activities on gambling is purely entertainment. Fortunately, there are watchful reporting entities that detect these types of transactions. For example, here is an unusual transaction report we recently received from a reporting entity from this sector (the text has been anonymized and adapted at some points to make it clearer):

A report text such as the above is extremely informative for FIU Netherlands. It provides us with an insight into the considerations that led to the reporting of the unusual transaction and describes the reporting entity’s approach. An internal alert from transaction monitoring prompted further investigation aimed at verifying the customer’s income, which was also put into context. In this way, the text of the report outlines the background behind it. Furthermore, the report specifies why the case was unusual (inconsistency with customer profile and strong reaction from the customer to questions) and points out the possible link to crime (inexplicable amount of money).