HONORING THE ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Recognizing visionaries who have made the most significant contributions to their financial institutions and to the AML international community in the past year. As your association, we would like to honor those members who have dynamically tackled the challenges and risks posed by money laundering and terrorist financing. For 2008, we encourage you to nominate a deserving colleague whose contributions have helped ACAMS grow to 7,000 members in over 100 countries. This unique opportunity gives exemplary candidates a spotlight for recognition—even if that deserving candidate is you.

ACAMS Community Impact Award:

Kevin Sullivan, CAMS
Investigator with the New York State Police department

ACAMS AML Professional of the Year:

Members of the Special Investigations/Narcotics (Money Laundering Unit) Organized Crime & Narcotics Division from Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.A

Police Lead in Achievement Awards

Police officers were the stars of this year’s ACAMS Achievement Awards.  Kevin Sullivan, an investigator with the New York State Police department, won the ACAMS Community Impact award.  Sullivan graciously accepted his award and left the audience with some words of wisdom. Instead of living by the adage that if you give a crooked man enough rope he will hang himself, Kevin suggested “Don’t give a bad guy any rope, because he will tie you up and beat the living daylights out of you.”
In the nomination submittal Sullivan was praised for his work in “raising the awareness level of both financial institutions and law enforcement in New York City and Hudson Valley areas of New York State. He has worked tirelessly to create programs to instruct and train both the private and the public sectors.”

Sullivan “was at the forefront of money laundering and fraud issues related to privately owned ATMs,” and “was instrumental in creating the Hudson Valley SAR Review…  Understanding that these money laundering concepts and the reverse engineering methods were new to the vast majority of attending law enforcement personnel, he… took the time to slowly indoctrinate the various detectives, investigators and agents into the money laundering process and made it easy to understand. Investigator Sullivan arranged for, with the assistance of MasterCard, a one-day training seminar just for law enforcement personnel. This was attended by over 140 members of the law enforcement community.”

The ACAMS AML Professional of the Year award was awarded to the members of the Special Investigations/Narcotics (Money Laundering Unit) Organized Crime & Narcotics Division from Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.A. The award was presented to Sergeant James A. Cox III, who warmly greeted the audience with a “good morning y’all” and accepted the prestigious award on behalf of himself and detectives Shawn Monaghan, Eric Powers, David Baucom, and Joseph Pittman. 

The nomination submission told of the creation of the squad and their work to date.  “The Bansal crime family resurfaced in 2001… In 2004, a confidential informant was developed and a new case was initiated into this criminal enterprise.”  As the case developed it was determined that a specialized unit was required to focus on investigating money laundering and other financial crimes. As a result the Cox’s unit was created.  The squad all “passed the CAMS examination and proudly carry the title of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists.  This title can be found on each one of the detectives’ qualifications they present on their search warrant affidavits.”

“The investigation carried out by the squad uncovered illegal monies estimated from hundreds of thousands to millions derived from loan fraud, mortgage fraud, loan sharking, illegal gambling, and drug distribution that were laundered through local banks and businesses.”

ACAMS congratulates Kevin Sullivan, an investigator with the New York State Police department and the Special Investigations/Narcotics (Money Laundering Unit) Organized Crime & Narcotics Division of Fairfax, Virginia on winning the Achievement Awards.  

Achievement Awards Press Release

This award recognizes the most outstanding professional in the AML field during the past year. Worthy nominees would be AML professionals who have made the strongest contributions to the field with clear, quantitative results that have made a significant, positive impact on the industry. The contributions should center on solving challenging problems, executing a clear mission in an efficient, effective manner or a significant achievement. Examples of the kinds of contributions that will be considered include the following: successful money laundering investigations, enforcing key regulations, drafting and passing laws, implementing an innovative AML training method, creating or revamping an AML program or process and detecting a money laundering scheme, among others.

Judging criteria include:

• Difficulty of initial problem/mission/challenge
• Efficiency of plans or methods to resolve problem/fulfill mission
• Creativity of approach in resolving problem/fulfilling mission
• Skilled use of resources in resolving problem/fulfilling mission
• Results of professional’s efforts in terms of bottom-line impact

This award recognizes the ACAMS member who has done the most to raise awareness in their community about money laundering and the efforts to combat it through taking the lead on creating and organizing a program in their institution or region with broad impact.

Judging criteria include:

• Scope of activities
• Efficiency of activity coordination
• Demonstrable results of community awareness efforts, e.g. media coverage

Please submit entries in digital format to:
Gabrielle Hartmann, CAMS
ACAMS Education and Training Specialist
ghartmann@acams.org
1.866.459.CAMS
1.305.373.0020

To submit any additional information that cannot be sent electronically, please fax or mail to:
Fax: +1.305.373.7788
Mail: ACAMS/Achievement Awards
Brickell Bayview Center
80 Southwest 8th Street
Suite 2350
Miami, FL 33130 USA
Attn: Gabrielle Hartmann
(Must be postmarked by August 20, 2007)

When submitting an entry, please be sure to include:

1.) Contact Information (your information and that of any person you may be nominating):

• ACAMS Member Number
• Nominee’s Full Name
• Title and Organization
• Business Address, State/Province, Country, Zip Code or Country Code
• Business Phone, Fax and
• Email

2.) Categories: Please indicate the category for which you are submitting

• ACAMS Community Impact Award
• ACAMS AML Professional of Year

3.) Entry:

• For each entry, please provide a 1 to 3 page synopsis of your submission that addresses the specific judging criteria of each category.