Deep Set Classifier for Financial Forensics: An application to detect money laundering

Abstract: Financial forensics has an important role in the field of finance to detect and investigate the occurrence of finance related crimes like money laundering. However, as with other forms of criminal activities, the forensics analysis of such activities is a complex undertaking with attempts by the adversaries to constantly upgrade their ability to evade detection. Also, the extent of the volume and complexity of financial activities or transactions further complicates the task of performing financial forensics. Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence algorithms could be used to deal with such complexities. However, the challenge of limitedly available labeled datasets especially with fraudulent activities limits the means to develop efficient algorithms. Additionally, the complexity of defining precise search patterns of evasive fraudulent transactions further complicates this challenge. In this paper, we developed a novel deep set classifier algorithm based on meta learning and applied it to deal with the complexity deriving patterns of interest with sample of limitedly labelled transactions to detect fraudulent cryptocurrency money laundering transactions. We a unique approach to train our model with progressive provision of samples and the test result exceeds leading research algorithms.