24 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS – JUNE 2024 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM Quantum AI, an Elon Musk-backed online trading platform, promises to change the way you can make money through crypto investments. “Smart investing that makes you $9288 in 5 hours and cured poverty”, the website says. A starter video even has Musk himself explaining how he has developed a piece of quantum computing software that wins stock trades at a success rate of 91 percent. There are also videos sprawled across Youtube explaining how the algorithm works and how one can safely invest on the platform. To the untrained eye, Quantum AI appears completely legitimate and highly promising. However, it was recently revealed that Quantum AI is actually the latest cryptocurrency scam identified by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), employing deepfakes to trick unsuspecting internet users into sharing their personal details and subsequently draining their bank accounts. In its public warning on May 8, the SFC said it had made a request to the Hong Kong Police Force to block access to its websites and social media pages. The linked domains were inaccessible as of this week, and the Facebook groups seem to have been removed. This is the latest in a string of warnings to be issued by the SFC highlighting a growing trend in the use of technology, particularly AI, in committing financial fraud. And Asia’s growing digital markets are particularly susceptible. The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), a Financial Action Task Force-style body for Asia, points out in their 2023 report that financial crime, through virtual assets and related service providers, poses the biggest threat to Asia’s markets. In Hong Kong, officials reported a 45 percent increase in white-collar crimes in 2022 compared to the year before. Singapore’s Minister for Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam, said in response to a parliamentary question that between January and June 2023, there were 34,605 crimes reported to the police. Of these, about 75 percent were attributed to white-collar crimes, scams, and cybercrimes. Tracking, regulating and prosecuting financial crime in increasingly globalised markets has become a prime focus for Asian economies, which are building robust infrastructure and laws in an internationally led effort to tackle the complexities with which economic criminal syndicates operate. LEADING THE WAY In April, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s financial industry regulator, launched the city-state’s first centralised digital informationsharing platform, COSMIC (Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering / Terrorism Financing Information & Cases). The platform seeks to facilitate the sharing of financial intelligence between participant financial institutions, so as to combat money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) and mitigate financial crime risks. “We expect such a platform to be effective in helping to counter the efforts of money-launderers and thwart the segmentation of information so institutions would have more data and see a bigger picture,” says Wilson Ang, partner and head of Asia regulatory compliance and investigations practice, as well as cybersecurity and data privacy practice at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright. WHITE-COLLAR CRIME THE MONEY WAR As technology advances, financial crime has become a major threat to global financial systems, surpassing many other forms of crime. Asia’s emerging digital markets, which are still developing regulations to combat tech-based crime, have become prime targets for financial fraudsters. Experts emphasise that international cooperation and robust enforcement of anti-money laundering regulations are essential to address this challenge effectively. BY NIMITT DIXIT Image: Summit Art Creations/Shutterstock.com
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