"What is money laundering?"
"Why do we need financial investigations?"
Searching for answers to pressing fraud questions like these? The Treasury Department has stepped in to help.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network - a relatively low-profile arm of the cabinet department - is spotlighting its crime-fighting through a new site on the Internet's World Wide Web.
As the agency responsible for smoking out modern-day Meyer Lanskys and Robert Vescos, it is now exploring ways that new technologies - like the Internet and stored value cards - could be exploited by drug traffickers and organized crime rings.
Step one toward catching criminals on the Web, officials say, is to advertise the agency's financial investigation services.
"We just want to get information out to people, both to the financial community as well as our law enforcement partners, and the Internet seems to be the way to go," said Carolyn Savage, a spokeswoman for the bureau - one of 12 within the Treasury Department that now have Web sites. Internet browsers can also pay virtual visits to the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Public Debt, or the United States Secret Service.
The birth of the network's Web site coincided with the launch April 1 of its Suspicious Activity Reporting System, which helps law enforcement agents investigate criminal activity by consolidating information and making it available electronically to all interested agencies.
Copies of the new Suspicious Activity Report form can be downloaded from the agency's Web site (though forms must be filed either in paper or magnetic format).
Sometime next month, the agency hopes to enhance its bare-bones site, adding new categories of information about financial crime and, eventually, a library of news releases.
Stanley E. Morris, the agency's director, is a fan of the Internet and believes it could become a boon for banks, merchants, and consumers. But he also worries that criminals could use the technology to transfer money quickly and anonymously.
"History has shown that as we invent new technologies, criminals are waiting on the periphery to use them," Mr. Morris said.
Mr. Morris' picture and biography lend a personal touch to his agency's home page, though its locator-address is a tad bureaucratic: www.ustreas.gov/treasury/bureaus/fincen/fincen.html.
