OFAC hits the Prince Group's corporate network as the FATF calls for global action on scam compounds

On 5 November 2026 OFAC designated four individuals and 41 entities that it says support the business network of the Prince Group Transnational Criminal Organization, and a Malaysian national, Chui Kok Wa, who it says led a scam network in Madagascar. Forty-five of the designations were made under E.O. 13581, as amended, and one under E.O. 13694, as amended. Treasury says the Prince Group runs digital asset investment scams, romance scams and other online fraud from Southeast Asian scam compounds and launders the proceeds through shell and offshore companies, and that the new targets helped the network survive earlier sanctions by managing offshore structures, concealing beneficial ownership and evading prior designations. The four individuals are Qiu Yong, who controls companies in the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong and whose SDN entry lists Cambodian, Turkish and Saint Lucian passports; his personal assistant Zhao Mengyao; He Yujing, wife of the previously designated Prince Group executive Chen Bo; and Visal Pang, a Cambodian associate already designated by the UK. Most of the 41 entities are companies linked to them or to earlier designees such as Dai An and Thet Li, in jurisdictions including Cambodia, Hong Kong, the British Virgin Islands, Singapore, Mauritius and Malaysia. Treasury says Chui's network defrauded Americans of more than US$400,000. The action builds on OFAC's Prince Group designations of 14 October 2025 and 23 June 2026.

On 4 November 2026, under what Treasury calls Operation Economic Outcast, OFAC designated an India-based network that it says posed as national ship registries to give vessels carrying Iranian petroleum false flags. Suniel Kumar Sharma was designated under E.O. 13902 for operating in Iran's petroleum sector, together with his spouse Jaspreet Preeti Shahid; Eswatini Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-based company; Oceaniek Technologies India; Aryavart Ship Management and its directors Ashwani Kumar Dhiman and Ishwinder Singh; and six further India-based companies linked to Shahid. Treasury says the pair began in 2014 by impersonating Dominica's flagging authority, that Eswatini publicly disavowed the registry Sharma set up in 2023, and that the network bought web domains to pose as flagging, certification and classification bodies for jurisdictions that had not authorised them, including Aruba, Guyana, Mali, Mozambique, Malawi, Sint Maarten and Timor-Leste. Fugo Ground Services in Türkiye was designated for ground handling for sanctioned Iranian airlines. OFAC published an alert on the Iranian shadow fleet's reliance on false flags and, under its Iran conventional arms authority, designated Alisher Domullodzhanov and added that tag to two existing entries, including Vanguard Tactical Supply Limited of Abuja, Nigeria.

On 5 November 2026 Australia announced Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions and travel bans on four Sudanese individuals and targeted financial sanctions on one entity. They are Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman al-Burhan, Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces; Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo Mousa, Commander of the Rapid Support Forces; Al-Tijani Al-Tahir Karshoum, described as de facto Governor of West Darfur; Hussein Barsham, an RSF field commander; and the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade, a paramilitary group aligned with the Sudanese Armed Forces. The Australian consolidated list records them under references 9000 to 9004 with a control date of 4 November 2026. The Foreign Minister said the sanctions build on those already imposed by Australia on 13 individuals under the UN Security Council's Sudan framework, and a class-based humanitarian permit has been issued for Sudan. Al-Burhan, Dagalo and the Al-Baraa Bin Malik Brigade already appear on OFAC's SDN List, Dagalo under the spelling MOUSA, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

In its quarterly report filed with the SEC on 3 November 2026, Block, Inc., the owner of Cash App and Square, disclosed that in October it reached an agreement in principle with the US Department of Justice to resolve the DOJ's inquiry through a deferred prosecution agreement. The DOJ would defer for three years a charge that the company failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, and would move to dismiss it with prejudice if Block meets its obligations. Block expects the agreement to set a gross monetary component of about US$964 million and a net payment of about US$764 million after credit for prior regulatory resolutions, and it has accrued US$764 million as of 30 September 2026. The resolution still needs a final agreement and court approval, and Block says the final terms could result in losses above the amount accrued. The DOJ and SEC inquiries followed a short seller report published in March 2023; the SEC staff closed its investigation in March 2026 without recommending enforcement action.

In a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent (No. 2021073404901) with an action date of 5 November 2026, FINRA censured Webull Financial LLC and fined it US$4.2 million. FINRA found that between January 2020 and September 2023 the broker-dealer, which was opening millions of accounts a year and had at least seven million customer accounts by autumn 2023, failed to develop and implement a reasonably designed anti-money laundering programme, including its customer identification programme and procedures to detect and report suspicious transactions. According to FINRA, the firm approved more than 120,000 accounts without forming a reasonable belief that it knew the customer's true identity; approved on an automated basis more than 50 customers who submitted photos of scenic landscapes instead of government-issued identification, because it relied on an identity verification vendor it did not reasonably supervise; and in some cases approved applications despite information in its systems indicating the customer was deceased. The fine also covers identity theft prevention failures and best execution failures. Webull consented to the findings without admitting or denying them, and agreed to retain an independent consultant.

On 5 November 2026 the FATF published Combating End-to-End Illicit Financial Flows linked to Scam Compounds, with almost 120 case studies from more than 60 jurisdictions. It says scam compounds are estimated to cause tens of billions of dollars of losses every year, that people from at least 80 jurisdictions have been identified in Southeast Asian compounds, with an estimated 120,000 forced to carry out online scams in Myanmar alone, and that people in more than 100 jurisdictions have been targeted. The report names virtual assets as a central laundering channel, including over-the-counter desks operating inside compounds, and says instant payments can move a victim's money out in as little as two minutes. In one case, blockchain analysis mapped more than US$100 million in victim inflows to a wallet cluster attributed to a single compound. Enforcement is pushing operators towards smaller, mobile set-ups in casinos, rented rooms and vehicles. The FATF's new principles stress disrupting the whole network, sharing information between banks, technology and telecoms firms and authorities, and acting in the first 24 to 72 hours after a scam is detected. It cites the UK's Scam Signals, mobile-network risk indicators given to banks at payment, associated with a 41 per cent fall in people scammed and a 44 per cent fall in losses.

On 3 November 2026 Canada introduced Bill S-8, the Combatting Financial Crimes and Drug Trafficking Act. According to the Department of Finance, it would restrict cash transactions of C$10,000 or more and third-party cash deposits, with deposit-taking institutions such as banks and credit unions exempt from the large cash restriction, and would make it a criminal offence to operate a crypto ATM that is not licensed as a money services business by a province or territory; licensed machines and crypto platforms could continue under enhanced federal requirements. For money services businesses, ministers could direct FINTRAC to deny or revoke registration, including on national security grounds, temporarily suspend registrations or require enhanced due diligence, and the ownership threshold for criminal record checks on owners and investors would fall from 20 per cent to 5 per cent. The bill would also let regulated businesses receive and use law enforcement disclosures for anti-money laundering purposes. The unlicensed crypto ATM ban would take effect 18 months after Royal Assent; the bill must still pass Parliament.