Beyond the paperwork: How to identify, report, and prevent the financial infrastructure of human suffering.
This course, developed entirely from scratch using the latest generation of AI research applications, provides a concise overview of the legal, ethical, and professional responsibilities accountants face in detecting and preventing money laundering in modern financial systems. Participants will examine how illicit funds are disguised through the classic stages of placement, layering, and integration, and why accountants are often targeted as professional gatekeepers in these schemes.
The program explores the major anti-money laundering (AML) laws and regulatory frameworks in both the United States and Canada, including the Bank Secrecy Act, the Anti-Money Laundering Act, and Canada’s Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
Through practical examples and real-world scenarios, the course highlights common red flags in financial statements, client onboarding, and unusual transaction patterns. Participants will also learn how AML responsibilities intersect with professional ethics, risk management, sanctions screening, and reporting obligations. The session concludes with a forward-looking discussion of how emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, and global regulatory trends will reshape AML compliance by 2030.
Topics Covered:
Understanding money laundering and its three stages: placement, layering, and integration
Key U.S. AML laws, including the Bank Secrecy Act and Anti-Money Laundering Act
Key Canadian AML laws, including PCMLTFA and FINTRAC requirements
Identifying red flags and suspicious financial transaction patterns
Client onboarding, KYC, and beneficial ownership verification
Reporting obligations, including STRs, SARs, and large cash transaction rules
The future of AML enforcement and AI-driven financial crime detection
Target Audience:
This course is designed for CPAs, accountants, auditors, and financial professionals who want to strengthen their understanding of anti-money laundering risks and their role as ethical gatekeepers protecting the integrity of the financial system.
MA, CMC, CITP/FITP
GARRETT WASNY, MA, CMC, CITP/FITP, is an artificial intelligence (AI) skills advisor to accountants, tax attorneys, enrolled agents, and tax preparers worldwide. His courses focus on the new intersection of accounting and technology, and provide guidance to practitioners on how to prosper in this dynamic age. His sessions demystify emerging cloud, mobile, and social applications, and explain in plain language how financial professionals can use these online tools to build trust, solve problems, and create new value. He’s also an award-winning Internet speaker, author, app developer, professional development specialist, and former management consultant for Price Waterhouse. He's published 50+ ebooks on computing and ethical issues related to accounting, written hundreds of articles and columns on Internet strategy, and delivered thousands of seminars and webinars to CPAs and accounting organizations around the globe.
Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.
Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.
