Glossary
Financial crime, in plain words.
The terms you’ll meet in this fight — explained the way we’d explain them to a friend, not a committee.
Money laundering
Making criminal money look clean by moving it through legitimate accounts, businesses, or assets until its origin is hidden.
Money mule
A person whose bank account is used — knowingly or not — to move stolen money on behalf of criminals.
Layering
Splitting and moving money through many small steps and accounts so the trail becomes hard to follow.
Structuring
Breaking large amounts into smaller payments that stay under reporting thresholds — also called smurfing.
Account takeover
A criminal logging into someone else’s account, usually with stolen credentials, and draining or misusing it.
Credential stuffing
Automatically testing huge lists of leaked usernames and passwords against login pages to find ones that still work.
Mixer
A service that blends crypto from many sources together, making it hard to tell whose money came out where.
Bridge
A service that moves value from one blockchain to another — used legitimately every day, and by criminals to break the trail.
Chain-hopping
Rapidly moving funds across multiple blockchains and tokens to outrun anyone tracing them.
Off-ramp
Any exit from crypto back into ordinary money — an exchange, an OTC desk, a payment card. The point where hidden funds must surface.
Sanctions screening
Checking customers and payments against official lists of blocked people, companies, and countries.
PEP
A politically exposed person — someone whose public position makes them a higher corruption risk, requiring extra checks.
Suspicious activity report
The formal report an institution files with authorities when it spots likely financial crime — often called a SAR or STR.
Threat graph
A live map connecting accounts, wallets, and identities — so investigators see one network instead of scattered clues.
False positive
An alert that looks suspicious but turns out to be innocent. In legacy tools, the vast majority of all alerts.
Air-gapped
A computer system with no connection to the internet at all — the strictest form of private deployment.
Missing a term? Tell us at hello@cygy.ai and we’ll add it.
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