-: Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm Peter Cook, ABA Chief Communications Officer.
I wanna welcome you back
to the 32nd Annual Financial Crimes Enforcement Conference.
Hope you've enjoyed the program so far,
including this afternoon's breakout sessions.
And I'm very pleased to have the chance
to introduce our next speaker.
Christopher Wray is the eighth Director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He became Director in August of 2017 after being confirmed
by the US Senate on a vote of 92 to five.
He previously held a number of top jobs
within the Justice Department,
most recently serving as Assistant Attorney General
for the Criminal Division under President Bush.
Director Wray has a long history of going after bad guys,
including those involved in financial crimes.
And we are thrilled to hear what he has to say today
about the threats facing the financial system,
what the banking sector can do to partner with the FBI
to confront those threats.
When Director Wray is done with his remarks,
I'll join him again for a short Q&A session.
Director Wray, welcome and thank you again for joining us.
The virtual stage is yours.
-: Well, thanks Peter.
I do wish of course, that we could be together in person,
but COVID has obviously forced all of us
to find new ways of getting together
and new ways of doing business,
and we're not alone.
It turns out unfortunately
that the pandemic has led criminals to new and creative ways
of doing business too.
So I'd like to talk to you today
about some of the top financial crime threats
and trends we're seeing at the FBI,
and what we're doing to counter those threats
and stop those trends.
And I'll try to share along the way some thoughts
about what all this means for banks in particular.
So maybe let me start with a prototypical fraud example
from this past year.
It's one that many of you may have heard of.
As of course, most of you know
the paycheck protection program allows businesses
to borrow up to $10 million to essentially make payroll
and keep their employees working.
Well, last April, a guy named Maurice Fayne
who owns a business called Flame Trucking,
applied to United Community Bank for a PPP loan.
And Mr. Fayne wanted United Community Bank
to disperse $3.7 million to him.
And to get it, Fayne certified to the bank
that his business employed, I think 107 people
and had an average monthly payroll
of something like $1.5 million.
Fayne said that the loan proceeds would be used
to pay workers and ongoing business expenses.
And so based on the representations in Fayne's application,
that Georgia-based bank funded a loan of over $2 million.
But within days, Fayne who also starred
in the reality TV program, Love & Hip Hop Atlanta,
allegedly used those funds to buy $85,000 in jewelry,
lease a Rolls-Royce and pay $40,000 in child support.
Oh, and as if that weren't enough,
he dispersed another $230,000 to associates
who helped him run a Ponzi scheme.
So needless to say, that's not the kind
of payroll contemplated by the CARES Act.
Fayne has now been charged with bank fraud,
making a false statement
to a federally insured financial institution
and money laundering.
And we're in the process of seizing $700,000 back from him.
As this audience, undoubtedly knows PPP loan applications
must be processed by a participating financial institution.
And if a PPP loan application is approved,
the lender funds the loan using its own money,
which is a 100% guaranteed by the SBA.
The good news for United Community Bank
and other banks like it
is that PPP loans are guaranteed by the SBA,
even if the borrower's application turns out later
to have been based on fraud.
The SBA will review the loan
to ensure the lender follow the program rules
in approving and servicing loan.
And if so, we'll purchase the loan from the victim back.
The bad news as a lot of you know,
is the immense cost and time and resources
that frauds like this impose on banks
like United Community Bank.
CARES Act frauds have really highlighted the burdens
and challenges that financial institutions face
when trying to undo the damage done by the fraudsters.
And for banks in particular,
it takes time and energy to prove on the backend
that they did their part at the due diligence stage.
At bottom, illicit actors are opportunists, right?
So it should be no surprise, I suppose,
that they would attempt to exploit the global COVID pandemic
to enrich themselves.
And that's why one theme I'll be returning to again
and again today is the vital importance
of all of us working together,
law enforcement, regulatory agencies,
and the private sector to stop criminals
from defrauding our banks
and otherwise abusing the financial system
to advance their crimes.
When it comes to evolving technologies,
criminal actors have all too often been quick studies
in an effort to stay one step ahead of law enforcement
and financial crimes are no exception.
Over the past nine months,
emerging financial crime trends have revolved
around COVID fraud and CARES Act stimulus funds.
So I'm talking about fraud involving
unemployment insurance, PPP loans
and small business economic injury disaster loans.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center,
which some of you are undoubtedly familiar
with are IC3, we call it,
which allows the public
to report suspected internet facilitated criminal activity
to the FBI, has received more
than 26,000 complaints specifically related
to COVID-19 fraud schemes.
That's 26,000 fraud complaints,
and you can bet banks are roped in one way or another,
and just about every single one of those 26,000.
In response, we've established
a COVID-19 fraud response working group
with the Department of Justice,
other law enforcement partners and civil regulators.
And the group is going after criminals,
trying to exploit this pandemic to make quick buck.
In one particularly well publicized case,
a former NFL player named Joshua Bellamy was charged
with wire fraud and bank fraud
for conspiring to obtain millions of dollars
in fraudulent PPP loans.
A bank dispersed to that former New York Jet.
And I should say as a diehard Giants fan,
I feel compelled to stress that he was in New York Jet,
a $1.2 million loan for his entertainment company.
As charged, he then used the proceeds
to spend over $100,000 on Dior, Gucci, jewelry
and tens of thousands more at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel
and Casino in Hollywood, Florida.
But that wasn't enough,
Bellamy was so allegedly pleased with this fraud scheme
that he looped in his friends and family.
And in the end, the scheme involved the preparation
of at least 90 fraudulent applications
and bank payouts of at least $17.4 million.
That means banks are on the hook for that $17.4 million,
unless, or until they can prove to the SBA
that they diligently followed the program rules
in approving and servicing those loans.
Now, in addition to COVID related fraud,
we're seeing a range of other fraud schemes,
and one thing that we're seeing across them
is the use of money mules.
And as this audience is I'm sure acutely aware
of criminals often use money mules in effect, middlemen
to deposit illegally acquired funds into bank accounts.
Money mules pass funds through wire transfers
or virtual currency to add another layer
between criminals and victims, why?
Well, to make it that much harder
for both banks and law enforcement to follow the trail.
And that's why it's just absolutely essential
that banks and law enforcement work together to fight back.
And with help from finance institutions
we are fighting back.
Just last week, for example,
the Justice Department announced the results
of an initiative that took action
against more than 2000 money mules, 2000.
These individuals help victimize everyone
from veterans to grandparents and they put banks right smack
in the middle of it all.
The opportunism though, it doesn't end there.
With a growing number of people doing most of their shopping
from home now to avoid COVID,
we've seen a rise in e-skimming
where hackers steal personal and payment information
as consumers shop online,
they then use that information
to make fraudulent purchases themselves,
or they sell it to someone who will.
Financial institutions like credit card companies can
then find themselves on the hook.
Our private sector partners indicate
that e-skimming attacks have grown
by at least 20% just during the pandemic.
We also continue to see a rise in synthetic identity fraud,
where large amounts of personal data stolen
during an online breach are combined with false information
to create new identities.
And there are the fraudsters use these synthetic identities
to apply for credit,
eventually establishing credit history
and higher credit limits.
And just one bad guy can accumulate hundreds
of accounts simultaneously using techniques
like credit piggybacking to accelerate the accrual
of higher credit limits.
And then all of this financial fraud lands at your doorstep.
Along with these emerging trends in financial crimes,
money laundering schemes continue
to underpin many of our investigations.
We've identified money laundering networks
that support otherwise unrelated criminal networks,
including a mix of international criminal organizations
and national security threats.
We're also seeing things like trade-based money laundering,
which uses trade transactions
to disguise criminals ill-gotten gains.
To combat these phenomena,
we're working with other government agencies,
financial institutions,
and other kinds of private sector partners.
We're engaging with leaders like you in the banking
and technology industries to enhance the FBI's capabilities
and to exchange information.
And we're using technology to help make the most
of the copious data that financial fraudsters can't help,
but produce.
So platforms like IC3, which I mentioned earlier,
give us the ability to ingest large amounts of data
and identify and analyze fraud patterns
that may not be visible to a single complainant.
So for example, a fraud victim in one city can be matched up
to a pattern of similar fraud victims all across the country
through analytical reviews of data sets,
allowing us to broaden our investigations and then in turn,
identify other potential subjects to go after.
Our field offices also have SAR working groups
that comb data to identify a new threat pattern
in their area.
These types of analysis help our field office,
all 56 of them to both stay well-informed
and be more efficient in fighting financial crime.
Staying ahead of the threat requires leveraging
our technological resources to their greatest potential.
So we continue to look for creative ways
to transform our data sets into actionable intelligence
and investigations.
BSA data is a great example
where the public-private partnerships help
us combat criminal activity in the digital age.
The financial intelligence generated by BSA reporting
is critical to law enforcement's investigation
and prosecution of both criminal activities
and national security threats.
So information from SARs, CTRs, CMIRs,
and other BSA reporting can
also help law enforcement agencies see the broader picture
of a criminal network.
That data allows us to map networks, trace funds,
and ultimately for fraud and protect banks
and other victims.
So take SARs, SAR narratives capture an incredible range
of conduct.
So let's say, a foreign institution established
as a US bank account
in order to conduct illicit transactions in US dollars.
Well, law enforcement can use reports
of these correspondent bank transactions
to follow financial trails,
investigate specific individuals and entities,
identify leads, connect the dots as they say,
and advance investigations.
We and our partners though,
aren't the only ones recognizing the need
for creativity and innovation.
Our success in working with banks
to fight money laundering schemes means criminals
are finding innovative ways to exploit new technologies
to clean dirty money.
Virtual currencies enable the almost instantaneous transfer
of value to a recipient anywhere in the world.
In some cases, though,
then there is very little paper trail
to follow should an investigation become necessary.
And this issue is exacerbated by cryptocurrency tumblers,
that is services that mix tracked and clean cryptocurrencies
to hide transactions and hinder law enforcement's ability
to track open ledger currencies like Bitcoin.
And as this technology proliferates,
banks are perhaps unsurprisingly becoming more comfortable
with a legitimate virtual asset risk profiles part
of their business.
In July, the OCC issued a public letter allowing
any national bank to hold the cryptographic keys associated
with cryptocurrencies
and what are essentially virtual vaults,
much like they'd hold stock certificates for investors.
Unlike banks, payment processors are
also increasingly comfortable integrating virtual assets.
So PayPal, for example,
now supports several cryptocurrencies,
enabling users to buy, hold,
and sell cryptocurrency directly through PayPal.
And by early next year, PayPal plans to allow customers
to use crypto assets within its merchant network
to pay for goods and services.
So it should be no surprise then
that has various legitimate uses
of virtual currencies become more common.
These currencies have also moved to center stage
for the bad guys.
We now see predatory actors using virtual assets
across all criminal platforms to launder illicit funds.
And legitimate users of cryptocurrency markets
and exchanges have now become very tempting targets
for both criminal and nation state actors.
And that's because stolen funds can be instantly transferred
and there's no central banking entity
then can immediately freeze assets and pay victims.
We see actors across a wide range
of threats using virtual currencies
to purchase criminal tools like botnets,
longer their illicit proceeds, evade sanctions,
and otherwise try to prevent us from following the money
back to them.
Virtual currencies also enable
additional anonymization tools like malware as a service
and other dark market criminal products
that make tracing illicit activity just that much harder.
Now this kind of thing used to be limited
to really sophisticated adversaries, but now,
now even relatively unsophisticated actors
are using virtual currencies to cloak their activities.
And that proliferation require our agents
and analysts working almost every type of case now
to be able to recognize virtual currencies
to apply sophisticated analytic techniques and tools
and use them to obtain evidence and develop leads.
And all of that has in turn required
a significant investment on our end and resources
and training for our investigators and analysts.
As a result, the FBI has developed deep expertise
in virtual currencies,
and we're now getting advanced analytic techniques
and tools into the hands
of our professionals investigating pretty much everything
from child exploitation to public corruption.
And we're drawing connections from work we do
across a range of investigations
to help map elicit payment networks.
We're trying to be creative,
seizing virtual currencies when appropriate,
working with foreign partners
to follow criminal trails overseas,
and collaborating with our colleagues
at other investigative agencies, the SEC, the CFTC,
and of course, DOJ to stay on top of threats as they evolve.
We're also collaborating more and more
with the financial industry itself and with academics,
both to further advance our understanding
and use of existing technology
and to proactively position ourselves
to see what's on the horizon.
Technology affects every kind of threat we face,
criminals, terrorists
and nation state actors will all continue
to use technology to try and anonymize
and facilitate illicit activity,
which is why we've gotta continue
to invest in our own technological resources
to ensure that we're staying ahead of each threat.
And that brings me to maybe the most important section
of my remarks, partnerships.
Moving forward, we've got to use our respective strengths
to work towards a common purpose,
keeping our economy, our citizens, and our companies safe,
secure, and confident in a digitally connected world.
We've gotta find even more ways to work together,
public and private sector.
And it's not in my view, it's not just the best option,
it's really the only option these days.
The FBI has a long history of cooperating
with law enforcement and private sector partners
across the globe to confront a variety
of complex criminal threats.
And that kind of team approach
is how we'll successfully combat financial crime.
We're exchanging valuable information
with the private sector through everything
from conferences like these
to our daily discussions with corporate partners,
which are also, I should say,
informing our strategic focus by making sure
we know what threats most concern you.
Overseas, we've got FBI legal attaches sharing intelligence
and building partnerships with both foreign law enforcement
and foreign security services
and enabling what is effect a virtuous cycle of cooperation.
I say that because the way it works
is we pass information developed
through our investigations to our foreign partners,
including warnings about frauds perpetrated
against financial institutions and American citizens.
And then our partners who respond
to those leads can in turn provide us
with more information about the threats we all face.
And that information then feeds our global investigations
and helps us discover even more indicators
that the private sector can then use
to mitigate these threats.
It also provides us with more arrest opportunities,
allows us to recover more of the illicit funds
and it puts us in a position to generate more information
so that in turn, pass back to our partners.
And again, that true virtuous cycle.
We're making significant strides in my view,
and we've had a number of successes,
but I really believe we need to collaborate even more.
You are bringing expertise to the table,
you know the risks to your institutions,
you're identifying the fraudsters
and you're gonna see emerging threats coming down the road.
At the FBI, we have unique expertise too.
We're able to perform analysis and then combine that
with the intelligence we collect
to alert you to what we're seeing out there
and how these emerging frauds can affect your institutions.
In turn, we need financial institutions
to continue to work with us through SARs and other means,
and to work with our field offices to initiate cases,
which is why I hope you all have
a strong working relationship with the special agents.
And the SAC is the special agents in charge working
in your particular communities.
And if you don't, I would encourage you to work with them,
to talk about your concerns
and let us know how we can best be helpful.
We now have, some of you may be surprised to learn this,
but we now have private sector coordinators
in every FBI field office.
And if you haven't met that person in your city,
you should make that connection.
We've gotta keep helping each other
so we can protect each other from threats that we all face.
And we've got a place and even greater emphasis
on information sharing than we ever have before.
Technological advances give financial criminals the means
to commit crimes and new and the various ways.
But when it comes down to it,
it's the same as it ever was, right?
It's all about the money.
Criminals will go after it any way they can,
and they'll never let a crisis go to waste.
And this pandemic has been no exception.
And they're going to exploit this environment
in ways that offer them,
they thank the least chance of getting caught anonymously
from behind the keyboard.
As illicit actors become more sophisticated
and have greater access to technology,
it means we've all gotta be smarter and quicker
about preventing and stopping fraud.
The good news is that while financial criminals have access
to more technological tools and institutions
than ever before, we do too, and we have each other.
You're innovating and we too are gonna continue
to evolve and innovate to counter the actors
wherever they operate.
So I wanna thank you for your insight
and your expertise as we continue to work together
to combat ever evolving financial crimes,
and I will end maybe with a call to action,
please engage with the FBI and your local FBI field offices.
We need to keep finding ways to help each other.
Thanks.
And now, Peter, I'd be happy to take a few questions.
-: Well, Director, I thank you again very much
for those remarks, and in particular,
your call for greater partnership and cooperation
between the banking sector
and the law enforcement community.
I know you're talking to a lot of bankers
in today's audience who share that sentiment with you.
And if it's all right, I might begin right there
with sort of where a lot of practitioners get
into it with law enforcement,
that's on the suspicious activity reports,
you mentioned there are some in the banking community,
as you know, who sort of pose a question,
what happens to all those SAR when they get filed?
they wanna assist law enforcement,
they wanna do the right thing by issuing a SAR,
but they never always know exactly what happens to it
once it's filed.
Can you help explain to this audience what does happen
to one of those SARs?
-: Sure, I'm happy to try to take that on.
I will say that one part of my biography
that's relevant here that in the interest of time
you left out, is that in between stints in law enforcement,
in the private sector I worked with
and represented an awful lot of major banks.
So I do understand, I think the perspective
of people in the industry,
and I recognize that the volume of SARs
is probably the understatement of the century, a challenge,
and sometimes overwhelming and burdensome.
But I will tell you that the FBI reviews every SAR we get,
each and every one.
And we use them to initiate and develop investigations
that are essential to our mission of protecting victims,
including banks.
And so the fact remains that despite the headache,
diligently filing them is one
of the most important things banks can do
to make sure that we've got the right kind
of financial crime intelligence for everybody's sake.
Now, I do understand that there are undoubtedly ways
in which the system can be improved.
Much of that is over in the neighborhood
of the regulators.
But I do think that the more we're communicating
with each other, the more satisfying
that exchange can be not just on our end,
but on the industry's end as well.
-: So the image that some people might put out there
of a giant black hole that SARs fallen to,
not the correct image they should have?
-: No, no, there's no black hole.
There is a gigantic, you know, canyon
in which we're digging around, looking at information.
And you know, the funny thing about intelligence
is that you don't always know it when you see it.
You don't always recognize the relevance of it,
and sometimes some of the SARs
that don't seem as immediately relevant one month
suddenly become very relevant a month later
as we start connecting the dots with other information.
But ideally, you know, the individual bank,
in addition to filing the SAR
is making contact with the local FBI field office,
which would be conducting the investigation.
And that I think would ensure both faster action,
but also perhaps a more satisfying reaction
to the perception of the black hole.
-: As I mentioned, we've got a lot of practitioners,
people on the ground doing this work at banks right now
around the country.
Can you offer them advice as
to exactly what they can put in a SAR
to make it most useful to law enforcement?
-: (laughs) Well, at the risk of sounding like a cop out,
all the details in SAR are a value to us.
You know, whether it's the, you know, the identifiers,
the addresses, the phone numbers, the IP logs,
including date and timestamps.
But if I had to pick one, I think if you were
to talk to most of our agents and analysts,
they would tell you that the free text descriptions
of why your examiners flagged a particular transaction
as questionable is something that in many ways
is the most valuable, because it's,
it comes back to what I said in my remarks really,
that we recognize that your folks have expertise
and understanding what it was about the transaction
that caused it to raise a red flag
is particularly useful on our end.
We really value that.
-: Director, is there maybe a real-world example
that helps paint that picture
for the bankers listening here?
-: Yeah, I mean, I will say that this comes up constantly
when we're talking about, I mean,
I hear from people even at my level all the time
about something we got out of SARs,
but, you know, maybe one that sort of ties together
a bunch of the things that I talked about
in my remarks ranging from the COVID fraud piece,
but also our efforts to target diverse criminal networks
and not just the traditional white collar criminals.
So just, I guess really just a couple of months ago,
for example, the FBI opened
an organized crime bank fraud investigation in LA
that was based on a bank referral.
And it involves people who were affiliated
with an Armenian organized crime group
that had submitted, you know, millions and millions
of PPP loan and bank fraud account applications.
And then, you know, in fact pattern
that's a lot, like some of the things
I mentioned in my remarks using it
for personal expenses, buying, you know,
half dozen luxury residential properties, et cetera.
And within weeks, really within weeks
of getting that referral from the bank,
we had an FBI SWAT team executing two arrest warrants.
We had other agents executing I think,
seven or so search warrants.
And again, all within weeks, we had,
you know, four of the key individuals indicted
in a 12 count indictment of bank fraud,
wire fraud, et cetera.
So that was a situation where that bank referral was
at the heart of it and enabled us
to take action in conjunction with,
I should emphasize a number of our key partners,
so the SBA OIG, the HFA OIG, the FDIC OIG,
and of course, IRS CID.
So yeah, that's just one example,
but there are many like it, and it just it,
that's an instance where in a very short period of time,
rather than building over time,
if some kind of painstaking RICO case against
an organized crime ring that we wanted to dismantle,
we were able to, thanks to that bank,
bring financial crime charges
and make the whole thing come down much more quickly.
-: It's really helpful to hear a real-world example
like that, thanks for that.
Let me switch to cyber,
I know you spoke in your remarks
about how the bad guys are innovating and they're getting,
you know, trying to stay a step ahead of you all
and the banks for that matter,
when it comes to innovation and cyber,
how would you say cyber criminals are typically targeting
US financial institutions right now?
-: Well, I guess a couple things I would say.
First, spear fishing almost certainly continues
to be a common way, but maybe one that might not be as much
on your audience's radar that I would flag
is cyber criminals targeting the vulnerabilities
in third-party services for initial infections
as a way to present a new risks and challenges
to the financial institution.
So, you know, in many ways the financial services sector has
some of the most robust cyber security of any industry,
but I think there's perhaps an underestimated,
in fact, I'm confident, underestimated risk of compromise
to an otherwise secure network by the bad guys,
since they coming in through third-party services,
which might not have the same level of cyber security,
but in turn are incredibly impactful in terms of disruption
on any number of client institution.
So I think looking at third-party risk is something
I would urge your audience
to make sure they're paying attention to.
-: Got you, let me ask you about another thing
that's been in the news a lot recently,
ransomware attacks increasingly report around the US
and around the world.
Number of high profile attacks on critical infrastructure,
what's the rest of the financial sector from ransomware,
what advice can you offer?
-: So well, first off you're absolutely right
that ransomware is increasingly a concern.
It's becoming a lot more sophisticated,
both in its targeting, but also in its techniques,
all designed to maximize the impact,
increase the risk of payment or the likelihood of payment
and extort higher amounts.
In some ways it ties back to the point
I was making just a minute ago about third party risks,
because I think there is in some ways,
a greater risk to a lot of finances
since at least the sophisticated ones these days
that the ransomware actors could essentially shut down
a third party service on which a financial institution
is incredibly reliant through ransomware.
So that's, I think one place to be on the lookout
that may, again, may be somewhat underestimated
by a lot of people.
-: You mentioned in your remarks as well,
the IC3, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Talk to me a little bit more about engagement
with the financial sector there.
How do you want banks engaging with that?
Are you seeing the kind of cooperation
and partnership you would like to see there?
Where's the room for improvement?
-: I think we have really great relationships
with the financial services sector
as I look kind of across the FBI's interaction
with the private sector.
You know, certainly IC3 is one place
to make sure that we're able to connect the dots
and see threats in the aggregate,
working with the local field office,
which I've mentioned several times
is something I would urge your member institutions to do.
So you're kind of dual tracking it,
you know, both work in the local field office
and submitting it to IC3,
but I think one of the places I'm particularly interested
in looking to see growth and that is happening more and more
is on the strategic level.
So it's not just on some of the things like IC3,
we have, many of your members may be familiar
with the NCFTA, right?
Which is, you know, really as a situation,
and I expect to see more and more of these kinds of things,
where you have cyber experts from law enforcement sitting
in effect side by side with industry academia
and non profits,
and in many ways the financial services sector
was kind of leading the way with that.
And that'll it given the volume
that your institutions are dealing with,
you talked about the SARs and the perception
of the black hole, given the volume
that we're having to deal with.
There's a big data trying to be more strategic
in order to prioritize, I think is something that
is a place where I think we can work together even more.
-: What keeps you up at night?
What worries you most as FBI Director these days?
-: (laughs) Well, at the risk of sounding a little flippant,
sometimes, you know, as you might expect,
I get asked that question a lot.
And I've told my family that people keep asking me
what keeps me awake at night,
and they all start laughing and say,
we would love for you just not to fall asleep
at the dinner table,
but figuratively speaking, I worry about a lot of the things
that I think most of us worry about.
I worry about the cyber threat, which is, you know,
it's bigger and more all consuming than ever before.
I worry about a homegrown violent extremists
and domestic terrorists.
I worry about the spike in violent crime that's going on.
I could go on and on, but I think in many ways,
the things that worry me the most are what,
you know, former Defense Secretary, Rumsfeld used
to refer to as the unknown unknown.
You know, we've got so much on our collective plates
and we're so in the middle of everything we're tackling,
I worry about what's looming around the bend
that maybe we're not on the lookout for enough.
I think we can all do better than we do right now
to be, like I said, trying to be more anticipatory
and more proactive and not just fighting the fight
that's kind of right in front of our noses.
And so that might sound like a strange answer
to your question, but in many ways,
that's what worries me the most,
'cause I sometimes think people don't do enough of that,
both frankly, in government and in the private sector.
-: And let me just ask you finally, Director Wray,
again, we thank you so much for your time.
You spoke a lot about this partnership,
the need for cooperation between the private sector,
the financial sector and the FBI,
you got a final message for this audience.
Is it really as simple as calling
their special agent in charge down the road?
What message would you leave here the audience with today?
-: Well, I think what I would say, I mean,
I've hit the theme of partnership over and over again
this afternoon, but the way I've talking about it
inside the FBI is that I have articulated as a goal
for our folks to be known as the best partner.
I want everybody out there,
whether it's our intelligence community counterparts,
our law enforcement counterparts, or foreign partners,
or our private sector,
including financial industry partners to always say,
man, there's no better partner than the FBI.
And to do that, I think we have a big, a good foundation
to build on.
I think that the exciting part of that,
or the challenge that I would extend
is to not just all get along well and work well together,
but to try to look for synergy.
So I keep saying, look for ways to make our two,
that is the FBI's two, put it together with your two.
So say any one of your institutions, two,
and have an equal more than four.
That's where we're really starting to make progress.
None of us has the resources we need to tackle everything
that's on our list and the way we're gonna be able
to accomplish it is finding those situations
where we can make the whole be greater
than the sum of the parts to put together
what each of us brings to the table
and find those synergies.
And so that's the challenge I'm extending to our workforce.
And if it's not too presumptuous,
that's the challenge I would extend to all of your members.
-: Well, Director, again, thank you so much for your time
for the work of the FBI in combating financial crimes.
Please, know you have a willing partner in America's banks.
We really do greatly appreciate
you taking time out of your schedule.
I am surprised to learn you're a Giants fan,
and now I've got a new term to learn track down,
It's crypto tumbler, I didn't know that one until today.
I'm gonna do a little research on that.
-: Thanks to all your members,
and everybody stay safe out there.
-: Appreciate it, thanks very much.