On Jan. 13, 2020, the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards (Edwards) pled guilty to conspiring to unlawfully disclose Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). Edwards, a former senior level adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), repeatedly disclosed highly sensitive information in SARs, as well as actual SARs, to a reporter from October 2017 to October 2018. Edwards saved SARs to a flash drive, took pictures of the SARs and then texted the images to the reporter. Edwards also sent the reporter internal FinCEN emails and correspondence related to the SARs. The reporter used the information gleaned from the SARs to publish 12 articles. The SARs pertained to Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, Mariia Butina and the Russian Embassy. The maximum sentence for the crime Edwards pled guilty to is five years.

Author

John Zasada, JD, CAMS – Compliance Consulting Director, Financial Institutions Group. John can be reached at zasada@doeren.com.