United States
BSA/AML Sr. Officer with a B.A. in Business Management, M.A. in Terrorism Studies, Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS - ACAMS), Certified Cryptocurrency Expert (CCE – Blockchain Council), TRM Labs Certified Blockchain Investigator, 11 years of KYC/AML compliance experience at large financial institutions/fintech/crypto start-ups, and a former United States Marine Corp Counterintelligence Team Commander. Experienced in the various facets of AML to include CIP, KYC, CDD, EDD, TMS, and screening; as well as operationalizing policies. Goal-oriented and strategy-focused with an emphasis on process improvement, issue management, stakeholder partnership, change management, leading initiatives, client-focus, and onboarding. 14 years experience in people management and team leadership. Experienced with project planning and execution in a high-intensity environment with competing priorities and shifting deadlines.
Managed and led 12 specialists in the Customer Onboarding and Management department to preside over various KYC and EDD workflows in order to escalate suspicious activity, uncover terms of service violations, and conduct various KYC and EDD functions. Managed the capacity planning and staffing of those workflows while developing, from scratch, the non-individual (business entity) customer onboarding compliance policy; operationalized said policy to meet BSA requirements. Created division-wide performance management and workflow dashboards for senior leaders to report and track vital metrics. - Worked with the business to create, implement and scale a compliance onboarding policy for non-individual legal entities, which resulted in the compliant onboarding of tens of thousands of new customers within 6 months for a Fintech with 52 million active users and over $14B in Annual Revenue. - Trained 100+ staff (in-house employees and third party vendors) on the end-to-end onboarding and EDD review process for various qualified legal entity customers. - Built reporting mechanisms through Google Sheets to provide dashboards for senior managers in order to manage specialist/team performance, track and manage impending due dates and workflows, and monitor capacity plans for effectiveness. This reporting uncovered inaccurate planning calculations, led to the removal of low performers, and uncovered performance-based ethical violations. - Worked with program managers and engineers to ensure accurate risk-based alerting, tuning, and suppression logic was implemented throughout 25+ KYC and EDD workflows. - Direct Responsible Individual (DRI) for 22 separate KYC and EDD workflows, which included staff planning and managing the execution of over 10,000 timely and high quality case reviews per month.
• Manager and leader of 10 direct reports responsible for investigating, drafting, QC-ing, and submitting Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) related to illicit or potentially illicit (AML and fraud) crypto-currency-related blockchain transactions • Managerial duties include capacity planning, scalability planning, and administrative management of direct reports • Assisted in building the Transaction Monitoring Services program from the ground up to include building employee scorecards and stack ranks, QC processes, desktop procedures, and issue resolution and tracking • Acted as Issue Manager and Project Lead in the development of the Compliance Support Inspect & Repair program • Managed the construction of various procedures and guides resulting in over 30 separate guidance documents • Built reporting via Google Sheets to deliver forecast and actual time, quality, and productivity rates in order to measure Average Handling Times (AHT) and deliver weekly reporting to the compliance and policy director • Managed individual project managers responsible for separate works streams as it relates to program issue tracking (Learning and Development support, desktop procedure-writing support, and Quality Control program development) • Partnered with Financial Crimes and Compliance, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO/Contractors), Quality Assurance, Learning and Development, and others in order to ensure coordinated and effective change management • Empowered direct reports to act as owners of their own desk in order to generate ideas and actions to improve the existing program
• Assisted in the development and execution of a risk-based (compliance and reputation) approach policy for Wealth Investment Management clients with Cannabis Related Business exposure as it relates to the 2014 Farm Bill, 2018 Farm Bill, Food and Drug Administration, and the Controlled Substances Act • Led the initiative to create categorization guidance for affiliated parties, which assisted in the reduction of Cannabis Related Business assessments and related due diligence • Reconciled multiple data storage systems and reports on a monthly basis in order to ensure accurate reporting for audit teams • Recommended, performed, and enforced Ring-Fencing for Cannabis Related Business clients and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) for high risk international clients • Utilized open source and closed systems (Suspicious Activity Report/SAR databases) to assess existing customers and prospects • Analyzed customer account transactional activity to identify unusual or suspicious activity; filed internal UARs • Analyzed complex investment/asset holding structures for the purpose of identifying ownership and control • Conducted EDD reviews of high risk customers and larger and more complex relationships • Reviewed internal customer account documentation, external documentation, and third party vendor informational sources • Composed detailed written qualitative risk summaries making sound and supported recommendations for risk mitigation for high risk customers at onboarding and periodically throughout the life cycle of the customer • Functioned as a subject matter expert on various high risk customer processes along with Cannabis, AML and Financial Crimes related policy and procedures • Provided expert level guidance to partners across the various brokerage/private wealth businesses • Maintained current knowledge of the external regulatory environment and continuously assessed and reported real and potential impacts to the businesses
Founded a new Thanksgiving for Kids idea through LeBlanc Publishers, LLC. See commercial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZjjhMLKr6o. Trademarked the phrase 'Happy Tank Gibby' and applied it to two plush doll characters, Tank and Gibby. Obtained a copyright for Tank 'n Gibby, a children's book. Worked with artists, designers, and manufacturers across the globe to design, create, and sell a children's book with two plush dolls wrapped in a designer Thanksgiving package. Website www.HappyTankGibby.com is no longer active, but ask me anything!