AFC Trends and Typologies: Managing SAR/STR Volumes

Steve Gurdak is the initiative manager for the Washington Baltimore HIDTA’s Northern Virginia Financial Initiative (NVFI) and a member of George Mason University faculty. The initiative has served as a model SAR Review Team for over 15 years. Steve received FinCEN’s 2021 Director’s Law Enforcement Award “For Effectively Using Bank Secrecy Act Data to Safeguard the Financial System from Abuse by Illicit Actors.” This is just one of an impressive list of awards Steve and the NVFI has received for SAR and other BSA based investigations. Steve has over 30 years of law enforcement experience. Steve regularly trains new detectives and agents. He has written a number of articles, done webinars, and various presentations promoting better financial investigation literacy.

Gary Hartwig is the Senior Vice President and Director of Anti-Money Laundering Investigations for U.S. Bank. As the Director of AML Investigations, he has operational oversight and responsibility for investigative teams that conduct complex investigations which protect the bank against terrorist financing and criminal activities, with primary focus on money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act violations. 

Gary served in federal law enforcement for 27 years holding a variety of key leadership positions. He has extensive experience in combating transnational organized crime through directing complex criminal and civil investigations related to the transnational movement of criminal proceeds and the exploitation of our financial systems. As the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) from 2008 until he retired in 2015, he oversaw approximately 400 personnel located in 13 investigative offices throughout Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas.

Dennis M. Lormel has 51 years of distinguished professional experience fighting fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing and related challenges.  He spent 31 years in federal government service, 28 of which were as an FBI Special Agent.  For the past 20 years, he has been a private sector consultant.  

Mr. Lormel is the founder and President of DML Associates, LLC.  He provides risk advisory consulting services and training related to a wide range of anti-money laundering compliance and financial crimes matters.  Mr. Lormel has provided thought leadership on matters to include terrorist financing, financial crimes, corruption and money laundering through consulting engagements, and through speaking and training events at hundreds of industry conferences, as well as law enforcement and academic schools. He also shares his insight through news media interviews and as author of subject matter expert white papers addressing the current and evolving financial crime and terrorist financing environment.  

Mr. Lormel is a current member of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Specialists (ACAMS) Advisory Board.  He also serves as a guest lecturer at prominent colleges and universities.  Mr. Lormel recently completed a two-year term as the President of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.   

In his illustrious career in the FBI, Mr. Lormel amassed extensive major case experience as a street agent, supervisor and senior executive.  As Chief of the Financial Crimes Program, following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, he established and led the elite Terrorist Financing Operations Section.  For his visionary contributions in planning progressive investigative methodologies, Mr. Lormel received the U.S. Department of Justice Award for Investigative Initiative and the George H. W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism, from the Central Intelligence Agency.  

In his post FBI career, among numerous volunteer activities, Mr Lormel served as an Advisor to the Congressional Anti-Terrorist Financing Task Force and as a Board member for the West Coast AML Forum.  He also serves as the Chair of the ACAMS National Capital Chapter. 

Special Agent Heather L. McCue is a senior Special Agent at Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation. She began her career with IRS-CI in 2005. Throughout her career at the IRS many of her cases have focused on Bank Secrecy Act violations including structuring, filing of false Currency Transaction Reports and the prosecution of unlicensed money transmitters. Since 2012, she had been the coordinator for the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) program for the IRS-CI New York Field Office. As such, she has provided numerous trainings to financial institutions and other law enforcement partners on SARs and how to improve their use by the law enforcement community. In her daily responsibilities as the coordinator, Special Agent McCue uses SARs to develop new cases for the field office and provides support to cases that involve the Bank Secrecy Act.

Previous to becoming a Special Agent, Heather was a tax attorney who developed, implemented, and ran a Low-Income Taxpayer Clinic in New Hampshire. Her role provided support to taxpayers who could not afford to hire representation for matters involving the IRS.

Heather holds a J.D. from University Of New Hampshire Law School and a B.S. from the University of Arizona. She is a member in good standing of the New Hampshire Bar.