Data Con LA 2022 - Who Owns That Yacht? How Graphs Are Used to Identify Assets for Sanctions

Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved 2022
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Who Owns That Yacht?
How Graphs Are Used to Identify Assets for Sanctions and Seizures
DataCon Los Angeles 2022
Mark Quinsland
Senior Field Engineer - Neo4j
mark.quinsland@neo4j.com

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Welcome!
Mark Quinsland
Senior Field Engineer - Americas
mark.quinsland@neo4j.com

Agenda
● How the Ultra-wealthy exploit loopholes to shield assets
● Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Tracking - promise vs reality
● ICIJ
● How are Graph Databases being used
● Graph Data Science tools
● Questions
These slides (and additional bonus material) will be available for download

© 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Graph Databases Are the Future

75+
Insurance
of the Top 10
8
Banks
of the Top 20
North American
20
Automakers
of the Top 10
8
Retailers
of the Top 10
7 Telcos
of the Top 10
7
Hotels
of the Top 5
3
Aircraft
Manufacturers
of the Top 5
3
Pharmaceuticals
of the Top 5
5
A word from our sponsor…

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This is the story of an Egg
https://robbreport.com/lifestyle/news/faberge-egg-russian-superyacht-1234729438/

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That was found on this yacht

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That was owned by:
Suleyman Kerimov Eduard Khudainatov
OR

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Explore Visually
TODO: use Bloom to create
A subgraph of this - andbuild it out

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USA #2 Tax Haven
• Registering LLC or
trust is simple
• South Dakota and
Delaware lead the US
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-biggest-private-
tax-havens/

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(almost) Every Country is a Tax Haven

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IOR (Vatican Bank)
• Founded 1942 by Leo XII to transfer funds for
church members and official purposes
• Vatican City-State status provided secrecy
shield
• Exploited to move money & gold for Nazis,
Axis companies, war criminals, church
officials, and other corrupt persons
• On-going process to provide transparency
and follow international standards.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Gods-Bankers/Gerald-Posner/9781416576594

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Seized Yachts

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OpenScreening - Search & Explore
https://resources.linkurious.com/openscreening

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OpenScreening - quick demo
https://resources.linkurious.com/openscreening

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Denmark Business Authority
• Fraudsters were hiding their
ownership in order to avoid
taxes.
• Goal was to Reduce the
yearly VAT deficit by 1 billion
DKK (136M USD)
https://www.slideshare.net/neo4j/graphtalk-copenhagen-fraud-detection-with-graphs

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Reduce VAT Tax Avoidance
• DBA combined insights from
graph algorithms to improve
the metadata about
customers.
• Improved metadata was
used as input to ML
processes.
• VAT fraud was reduced
‘considerably’
https://www.slideshare.net/neo4j/graphtalk-copenhagen-fraud-detection-with-graphs

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Money Laundering 101

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The ‘Patriot’ Act Created a Massive Loophole
• Real Estate transactions
were exempt from
reporting requirements
• Multi-million $$ CASH
transactions became the
preferred way
• Sales of luxury condos to
shell companies and
foreign buyers
skyrocketed

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Out with the Old In with the New!

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Trump and Russians

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Trump + Condos + Russians + Shell Companies = $$$

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Trump + Condos + Russians + Shell Companies
• 1/3 of units in Trump
Tower sold to
Russians or Russian
shell companies
• One of 2 NYC
buildings selling to
anonymous buyers.
https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-
tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate

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Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)
• Corporate Transparency Act
passed in 2020
• Anyone forming a shell company
in US must list owner’s name &
TIN
• Banks must file Suspicious
Activity Reports to report
potentially illegal $$ movement
• Goal was to cut down on
largeCash payments for real
estate
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54226107

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FinCEN Files Leak
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54226107
• 2600 leaked documents including
2100 Suspicious Activity Reports
(SAR)
• Most SARs resulted in no punitive
measures.
• HSBC, JP Morgan, Barclays,
Deutsche Bank all made the SAR
‘Greatest Hits’ offender list.

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Beneficial Ownership - D&B
• Describe new regulation
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=281716713045688
https://neo4j.com/case-studies/dun-bradstreet/

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Graph Example
• Use the yacht guys to show their relationships
• This will need some researching
• Visualize in Bloom, but use workbench first to show the concept

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Morning: GDS Intro and GDS Internals
Graph Data Science
Graph Catalog
Graph Algorithms
Graph projection Graph machine learning

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Afternoon: Applying Graph Data Science
Graph Embeddings Graph visualization Best Practices
A
Fraud Detection

Neo4j Browser
• Data Scientist and Developer direct access to Neo4j
Graph Databases
• CRUD operations using Cypher query language
• Execute Neo4j GDS Algorithms
Neo4j GDS - End User Experience
• Point-and-Click Graph Visualization for Data Scientists,
Analysts
• Search, Visualize, Explore, and Discover
• Share and Collaborate with Business Stakeholders
Neo4j Bloom

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Neo4j GDS - End User Experience

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Why Are Graph Databases ideal
for this problem!

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_model
Start With a Domain Model

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Relational

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Relational
{}
Document

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{}
Document
Relational Graph

Neo4j Platform

Finding A Needle in a Haystack

Find the needle in the haystack using Graph Data Science

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Gartner’s Approach to Using Graph Analytics
https://neo4j.com/whitepapers/gartner-graph-technology-business-use-case/

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Graph Centrality Algorithms Assist in Analysis
• Closeness algorithms identify:
• Highly-connected nodes
• Built-in redundancy
• Betweenness algorithms identify:
• Strategically-connected nodes
• Single points of failure
• Potentially vulnerable nodes
betweenness
closeness

Highest Page Rank Score
Affected Models
Visually Exploring Impact Analysis
Replace this

Demo & Questions

Summary: Key Points
• Complex Digital Twin data are naturally and easily modeled as a graph.
• Digital Twin graphs can become very large, with potentially millions of connected data elements
that require frequent near-real time updates.
• Neo4j’s in-memory graph database provides the flexibility, performance and analytical
capabilities needed to build, manage and query Digital Twins on enterprise scale.
• Enriching the Digital Twin graph with data unified across multiple sources opens up many
related use cases and provides the most business value.
Update this

Director’s Cut / Bonus Material
Additional Slides skipped due to time restrictions

Additional Resources
• https://neo4j.com/whitepapers/forrester-total-economic-impact/?ref=who-uses
• https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/software-bill-of-materials-bom/
• https://neo4j.com/case-studies/japanese-auto-manufacturer
• https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-daimler-is-using-graph-database-technology-in-hr/
• https://neo4j.com/case-studies/caterpillar/
• https://neo4j.com/case-studies/us-army/
• https://cdn.vector.com/cms/content/events/2020/VK/VVCK/1027/1.UNECE-SW.pdf
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thats-power-graph-chris-seiler/
• https://www.unece.org/info/media/presscurrent-press-h/transport/2020/un-regulations-on-cybersecurity-and-software-
updates-to-pave-the-way-for-mass-roll-out-of-connected-vehicles/doc.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSfW3e2Cxcs
• https://neo4j.com/videos/graph-tour-2019-volvo-cars/
• https://neo4j.com/blog/graphs-in-automotive-and-manufacturing/
• https://www.slideshare.net/neo4j/volvo-cars-build-a-car-with-graphs
• https://www.slideshare.net/neo4j/modeling-manufacturing-with-graph-databases-a-journey-towards-a-digital-factory
• https://neo4j.com/blog/how-boston-scientific-improves-manufacturing-quality-using-graph-analytics/

Resources https://neo4j.com/product/graph-data-science/

ICIJ used Neo4j to uncover the world’s largest
journalistic leak to date, The Panama Papers,
exposing criminals, corruption and extensive tax
evasion.
The US space agency uses Neo4j for their
“Lessons Learned” database to connect
information to improve search ability
effectiveness in space mission.
German Centre for Diabetes Research (DZD)
uses Neo4j to make research more
accessible with multiple perspectives as
well as for machine learning
Knowledge Graph for humans & ML
Fraud Detection Knowledge Graph for humans
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Neo4j: Making Sense of Highly-Connected Data - For Good!

The Labeled Property Graph Model
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Nodes
• Describe the persons, things, etc
Relationships
• Describe how the Nodes are related
• Can have names and properties
• Often more important than the nodes
Replace graphic with Yacht

Data Con LA 2022 - Who Owns That Yacht? How Graphs Are Used to Identify Assets for Sanctions

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