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- 🎲 Sanctions Roulette: When Your Core System Thinks North Korea = St. Kitts
🎲 Sanctions Roulette: When Your Core System Thinks North Korea = St. Kitts
Illicit Edge - Edition for September 8, 2025
🎲 PODCAST DROP!
FinCrime Unfiltered with Sarah Beth Felix
Sanctions Roulette: When Your Core System Thinks North Korea = St. Kitts
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What happens when your core banking system thinks a North Korean passport belongs to someone from St. Kitts & Nevis? Or when Russia becomes Serbia, and China turns into Switzerland?
That’s not fiction — it’s the IRS vs ISO country-code trap. And it’s leaving banks and corporates wide open to sanctions failures.
In this episode, Sarah Beth Felix exposes:
The data glitch: How mis-mapped country codes quietly wreck sanctions/KYC.
OFAC’s $1.6M case: One Houston freight deal = Venezuela + Iran violations.
Marshall Islands red flag: Why a tiny island nation keeps surfacing in terror designations.
AI reality check: Bunq’s fine shows why regulators won’t accept “AI magic” without explainability.
Practical tip: Why you should ask corporate customers for their sanctions compliance program as part of onboarding and monitoring.
👉 Want Sarah Beth’s list of IRS vs ISO country codes?
Email: [email protected]
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