UPDATED MAY 2026

The U.S. financial crime landscape today is defined less by any single threat than by the convergence of scale, technology and access. Dirty money continues to flow through the U.S. at significant scale, with estimates suggesting that hundreds of billions of dollars move through the country’s financial system each year. While the U.S. has one of the world’s leading anti-financial crime landscapes, the country is also a prime target for global illicit financial activity and continues to grapple with a number of structural challenges. These include a fragmented regulatory architecture, persistent gaps in beneficial ownership transparency and corruption, uneven enforcement capacity, and ongoing exposure to both domestic and transnational organised crime.

The U.S.’ 2026 National Risk Assessment (NRA) found that the country’s top money laundering threats have remained consistent, with fraud, drug trafficking, cybercrime, human trafficking, human smuggling and corruption generating the largest volumes of illicit proceeds in the country. Illicit trade, including trafficking in stolen or illicit goods, also generates billions each year in the U.S.

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