Financial crime in the digital age: Key insights with Julie Girard-Dufour.

Financial crime in the digital age is evolving at an unprecedented pace. 

Artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, organized crime and increasingly sophisticated digital tools are transforming how criminals operate. As a result, investigators must reconsider how they identify criminal activity, follow financial trails and build defensible cases. 

That was the focus of Altia’s recent webinar, hosted by Toby Langston, Customer Success at Altia, alongside Sarah Saxton-Jones, Altia’s Director of Product. They were joined by guest speaker Julie Girard-Dufour, whose background in criminology, tax fraud investigations and financial crime enforcement brought a valuable perspective to one of the most pressing issues facing investigators today. 

Julie has spent her career investigating fraud across provincial and federal government agencies in Canada, combining practical investigative experience with an academic understanding of criminology and international affairs. 

The result was a thought-provoking discussion that went beyond individual scams to examine how financial crime has developed into a global ecosystem intersecting with: 

• Cybercrime  
• Organized crime  
• Money laundering  
• Human trafficking  
• Geopolitics and national security  

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the session. 

Financial crime is growing faster than ever.

One of Julie’s first observations was the sheer scale of financial crime today. 

Understanding the wider financial investigation process is becoming increasingly important as cases grow in both scale and complexity. 

In the US, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center continues to record billions of dollars in reported losses each year. In Canada, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre received more than 112,000 fraud reports involving over $704 million in reported losses during 2025. 

However, these figures only begin to show the true impact of financial crime. Many victims do not report fraud because they: 

• Feel embarrassed about what happened  
• Believe nothing can be done  
• Assume their loss is not significant enough to pursue  
• Do not know where or how to report it  

Official statistics therefore reveal only part of the problem. 

At the same time, technological advances have made fraud easier to commit and far more scalable. Criminals can automate attacks, create convincing false identities and target thousands of people simultaneously. 

For the teams responsible for investigating these cases, the challenge is no longer simply accessing information. It is organizing high volumes of financial and digital evidence quickly enough to identify the connections that matter. 

Fraud is no longer a standalone crime.

One of the strongest themes throughout the webinar was that fraud can no longer be viewed in isolation. 

As Julie explained, fraud now exists alongside cybercrime, organized crime, money laundering and human trafficking as part of the same criminal ecosystem. Criminal organizations rarely specialize in a single offense. Instead, they diversify their operations and use the proceeds of financial crime to support other illegal activities. 

Sarah expanded on this point from an intelligence perspective, highlighting how fraud investigations can be used as disruption tactics against broader criminal enterprises. By following transactions and identifying the people, businesses and assets behind them, investigative teams may uncover networks extending far beyond the original allegation. 

Financial intelligence can help teams identify: 

• Connections between suspects and businesses  
• Accounts used to receive or move criminal proceeds  
• Hidden assets and beneficial ownership  
• Transactions spanning multiple jurisdictions  
• Links between fraud and other criminal activity  

This is contributing to a wider shift toward a financial-first investigative mindset in Canadian policing, where financial intelligence is used to expose the structures supporting organized criminal activity. 

Artificial intelligence is changing the rules.

Artificial intelligence has become one of the biggest accelerators of financial crime. 

Traditional identity verification methods are becoming more vulnerable as criminals exploit: 

• Deepfake video and imagery  
• AI-powered voice cloning  
• Synthetic identities  
• AI-generated identification documents  
• Convincing phishing messages and websites  

Processes organizations have relied on for years, including identity documents, video verification and voice authentication, can no longer be assumed to offer the same level of assurance. 

Julie explained that AI is making fraud faster, cheaper and more accessible. It allows less technically skilled offenders to create convincing scams while enabling established criminal networks to operate at a much greater scale. 

For investigators, this means questioning many of the traditional indicators of trust that have supported investigations for decades. Digital content must be verified against multiple sources, while decisions must be supported by transparent and defensible evidence. 

Crime has become a business.

One of the most fascinating parts of the discussion centered on the industrialization of cybercrime. 

Criminals no longer need to possess every technical skill themselves. They can operate within sophisticated underground marketplaces where specialist services, stolen data and ready-made tools are purchased on demand. 

These services can include: 

• Ransomware-as-a-Service  
• Fraud-as-a-Service  
• Malware-as-a-Service  
• Stolen identity and payment information  
• Phishing websites and message templates  
• Money laundering and cash-out services  

These criminal enterprises can function much like legitimate businesses. Different individuals may be responsible for developing malware, compromising organizations, communicating with victims, moving stolen funds or laundering the proceeds. Each participant performs a specialist role before receiving a share of the profits. 

As Toby noted during the discussion, the idea of criminal organizations operating customer support services sounds almost surreal. However, it demonstrates how structured and professionalized these networks have become. 

This model also makes criminal activity more resilient. If one part of the operation is disrupted, other participants, tools and services may remain active. Investigators therefore need to look beyond the immediate offense and identify the infrastructure, relationships and financial flows supporting it. 

The human reality behind scam compounds. 

Perhaps the most sobering part of the webinar focused on scam compounds operating across parts of Southeast Asia. 

Julie explained how people may be recruited through fraudulent overseas job advertisements before having their passports confiscated and being forced to carry out online fraud under threats of violence. 

These compounds represent far more than financial crime. They expose the close relationship between fraud, organized crime and human trafficking. 

The people held in these compounds may be forced to carry out: 

• Cryptocurrency investment fraud  
• Romance scams  
• Voice phishing  
• Social engineering  
• Online impersonation  
• Other forms of financial deception  

The people carrying out the scams may therefore be victims themselves, coerced into targeting others. 

Toby reflected on how learning about these operations fundamentally changes people’s perception of online scams. What may appear to be an organized call center can be an environment where people are being held and forced to commit fraud. 

Julie also emphasized the importance of supporting survivors. Those who escape these compounds may possess valuable intelligence about the organizations involved, including: 

• Operating methods  
• Financial systems  
• Recruitment processes  
• Technology and communication platforms  
• Leadership structures  
• Wider criminal connections  

Combining victim-centered approaches with financial intelligence and open-source intelligence methods can help investigators build a more complete understanding of these networks. 

Cryptocurrency presents new investigative challenges 

The discussion also explored how cryptocurrency has transformed the movement and laundering of criminal proceeds. 

Digital assets allow funds to move across countries, platforms and wallets within minutes. This can make it difficult for investigators to intervene before assets are: 

• Dispersed across multiple wallets  
• Transferred between different blockchains  
• Moved through exchanges  
• Converted into other digital assets  
• Withdrawn or converted into traditional currency  

However, Julie was keen to challenge one common misconception: cryptocurrency is not invisible. 

Transactions recorded on public blockchains are traceable. The challenge lies in interpreting those transactions, connecting wallets to real-world entities and acting before funds move beyond the investigator’s reach. 

Successful cryptocurrency investigations increasingly depend on: 

• Acting quickly when suspicious transactions are identified  
• Working across agencies and jurisdictions  
• Using specialist blockchain analysis  
• Combining financial, digital and open-source intelligence  
• Identifying the people or organizations controlling wallets  

Tools capable of helping teams analyze financial records and cryptocurrency activity can support this work by bringing different types of investigative data into a more structured workflow. 

Financial crime is becoming a national security issue.

One of Julie’s most compelling arguments was that financial crime should no longer be viewed solely as an economic offense. 

Funds generated through scams and cybercrime can support wider criminal and geopolitical objectives, including: 

• Organized crime  
• Sanctions evasion  
• Human trafficking  
• Cybercrime operations  
• Activities connected to hostile states  

Rather than viewing fraud only as a situation in which an individual or organization loses money, investigators and policymakers must recognize that stolen funds may flow into much larger international networks. 

Canada’s plans to strengthen its coordinated response to fraud and money laundering reflect this changing environment. The proposed Canadian financial crimes agency highlights the growing need for intelligence sharing specialist capabilities and collaboration across agencies. 

This perspective challenges governments, law enforcement agencies, financial institutions and technology providers to think differently about the strategic importance of tackling financial crime. 

Collaboration will define the future of financial crime investigations.

If there was one overarching message from the webinar, it was that financial crime has fundamentally changed. 

Investigators can no longer rely solely on approaches designed for isolated fraud cases. Success increasingly depends on collaboration between: 

• Law enforcement agencies  
• Financial institutions  
• Technology providers  
• Government departments  
• Regulators  
• International partners  

It also depends on investigative technology capable of helping teams connect intelligence across multiple crime types. Financial records, open-source data, communications, cryptocurrency activity and organizational information may each reveal a different part of the same network. 

Modern financial crime investigations must bring these sources together while preserving accuracy, transparency and evidential integrity. This is one of the central challenges facing financial investigators as criminal operations become faster, more digital and increasingly international. 

Julie Girard-Dufour brought an exceptional blend of investigative experience, criminology and strategic thinking to the discussion. Sarah Saxton-Jones shared valuable insight into how investigative technology is evolving to support more complex cases, while Toby Langston connected the conversation to the real-world challenges facing law enforcement and public sector investigation teams across North America. 

The discussion reinforced a simple but important conclusion: financial crime is no longer just a fraud problem. It is a cybercrime problem, an organized crime problem, a human trafficking problem and, increasingly, a national security challenge. 

Understanding those connections is the first step toward staying ahead of the criminal networks that continue to exploit them. 

Conclusion.

Financial crime will continue to evolve as criminals adopt new technologies, exploit global networks and find faster ways to move illicit funds. Investigators must evolve with it. 

By combining financial intelligence, digital evidence and stronger partnerships between law enforcement and the financial sector, investigative teams can uncover the wider networks behind individual offenses and respond more effectively. 

The future of financial crime investigation will depend not only on following the money, but on connecting people, places and assets across the wider criminal ecosystem.