If financial crime were a sector of the U.S. economy, it would be on par with the lodging and food services sector—with money laundering activity accounting for 3.1% of the national GDP in 2023.
Despite its substantial scale, financial crime remains largely a concealed epidemic, extending across jurisdictions and borders and underpinning many of society’s gravest crimes: elder financial exploitation, fraud scams, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing.
Research we have conducted finds that financial crime is an invasive drag on our economy. Our analysis shows that annual U.S. GDP growth would have been more than 0.5 percentage points higher if just fraud losses were reintegrated into the economy.
While financial crime is an immense problem, its impacts are local and deeply personal—often with a disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable…
