Patriot Search

By current Federal Law and Regulation, agents and insurers are required to compare the names of customers setting up new accounts (including escrow and settlement accounts involving purchase, sale, refinance, and equity line transactions) against government lists of known or suspected terrorists, drug dealers, and foreign governments.

The purpose of the USA PATRIOT Act is to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and other purposes, some of which include:

• To strengthen U.S. measures to prevent, detect and prosecute international money laundering and financing of terrorism;
• To subject to special scrutiny foreign jurisdictions, foreign financial institutions, and classes of international transactions or types of accounts that are susceptible to criminal abuse;
• To require all appropriate elements of the financial services industry to report potential money laundering;
• To strengthen measures to prevent use of the U.S. financial system for personal gain by corrupt foreign officials and facilitate repatriation of stolen assets to the citizens of countries to whom such assets belong.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control list of "specially designated nationals" in alphabetical order may be found online. While we are not certain that a search of these lists will satisfy every requirement of the U.S. Patriot Act, at this point we believe that this much, at least, is required.