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What's New?
VisuaLinks 3.0 is the newest of the new. However, “We will release no software before it’s time.” We are currently running VisuaLinks 3.0 through its paces, beta testing it at some beta sites and subjecting it to vigorous internal testing.
VisuaLinks 3.0 will sport a new interface, new presentation graphics capabilities, and many other new features. Look to these pages in upcoming issues for details.
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Here are a few tips and tricks to help you use VisuaLinks quickly and more efficiently.
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Adding Notes
You can add notes to the objects in the View. To do so, right-click on an object in the View and choose Edit Notes from the pop-up menu. In the Notes window, enter a name and some descriptive information about the object. Click Save All and close the Notes window. Notes you create are available for viewing in the Notes Panel on the left.
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Internet Search
VisuaLinks lets you search for your objects at www.google.com. To invoke this feature, right-click an object and select Google Search from the pop-up window. In the Google Search window, move any attributes you want to search to the right side (e.g., Street, City, State and Zip-Code for an Address object) and click Search. Your web browser will open with the results of a Google® search for the attributes you selected.
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Adding Attachments
You can also add attachments to objects. Adding an attachment allows you to attach external files to objects. This can be any file available locally or on the network. Adding an attachment is similar to adding a note. Right-click an object and choose Add Attachment from the pop-up menu. In the resulting window, navigate to a disk location by choosing Local, or to a Shared VisuaLinks directory location by choosing Shared. Select the file you want to add as an attachment and then click Open. The attachment will be available to you in the Notes Panel on the left (VisuaLinks actually creates a note to assign the attachment to).
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Duplicate Detector
The Duplicate Detector is a feature that allows users to search for duplicate objects in a database, within the context of a specific model.
You can access the Duplicate Detector from:
 The  Service Center  Duplicate Detector option. The Services / Services for < Domain Name > /  Duplicate Detector menu command.
To set up the tool for use, you must select a model and an object to search. You can then select the object attributes that, when matched, return "duplicate" objects.
The criteria chosen are entirely up to you, allowing you to specify which attributes will be used to discover duplicate objects.
In the sample below (Figure 1), we chose to assign First_Name and Occupation as the match criteria. As such, when Duplicate Detector runs, it will read all the data in the database and return objects where First_Name and Occupation are exact matches.
Figure 1
When executed, the Duplicate Detector found two objects matching the criteria in the database. One of these objects was merged from two different source records. See Figure 2, below.
Figure 2
Finally, we select and display these two objects in the View, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Once the objects are loaded, they can be acted on by any additional analysis tools you may wish to apply, including walking, merging, etc.
Load Information Set
The Load Information Set feature loads data into VisuaLinks based on objects and associations defined in a data model. This service lets users read data by object type, or even the entire data set of a selected model, into VisuaLinks. It loads all the data associated with a specific model from the data source.
To load an information set, use:
The Service Center  Load option. The Services / Services for < Domain Name > /  Information Sets menu command. The Main Toolbar Import Information  icon.
The Information Sets window displays (Figure 4). The Models drop-down lists all of the available data models defined for active data sources.
Figure 4
Use the Models drop-down to select the model to load.
You can also:
- Limit the maximum number of results returned in the Max Return Items field.
- Adjust name alias setting using the Alias Mapping icon.
- Adjust the exclusion settings using the Exclude Values icon.
After all these settings have been defined, click OK to load the data for the selected model.
The Advanced tab (Figure 5) lets you limit the quantity of data loaded from the database by limiting the types of data (objects) that are loaded. The types shown in the right-hand list box are those that are currently selected for loading. Any types in the left-hand list box will not be loaded. When these types are encountered in the database, they will be ignored.
Figure 5- While this feature provides additional flexibility in loading data from the DB, there are a couple of things that you should keep in mind. First, if the types that you select for loading are not associated by the model, then there will be no links displayed in the View area.
For example, consider a model containing three objects: PERSON, CROSSING-EVENT and BORDER-CHECK-POINT. In this model, a PERSON is related to a CROSSING-EVENT and that CROSSING-EVENT is related to a BORDER-CHECK-POINT. If you limited the amount of data by loading only the PERSON and CHECK-POINT objects, when the data is loaded there will be no connections in the link chart. This is because the connecting objects (the BORDER-CROSSING-EVENTs) are not loaded. Executing a data walk would allow the system to locate and display connections.
- Limiting a load to a subset of objects in a very large database does not necessarily guarantee that the entire database will load. Although choosing a subset of objects to load will reduce the memory requirements for VisuaLinks, in very large databases, even this subset of objects may overwhelm VisuaLinks.
A New Data window (Figure 6) comes up to display how many objects and associations exist within the resulting Information Set. You can then:
- Change the default name of the set by typing a name in the Information Set Display Name field.
- Choose how the data should be loaded.
By default, the Replace Selected option is selected. This setting replaces any currently loaded data in the View area. Choose another option to change how the new Information Set affects existing Information Sets.
Click the OK button to complete the Information Set load.
Figure 6
VisuaLinks loads the data for the selected model into the View area (Figure 7).
Figure 7
- VisuaLinks will attempt to load all of the data in the database for the model you select. If you have a large database, this can lead to either extreme delays in loading, or in the case of very large databases, it my not complete at all.
- This feature can be disabled by the data modeler. If this feature has been disabled for a particular model, the model name will not display in the Information Sets window's Models drop-down.
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Compliance Analysis
This month's Link Chart focuses on exposing the compliance of agents within a money service business. Instead of looking for individuals involved in money laundering activities, the spotlight is on the agents involved with conducting the actual transactions.
According to the U.S. Department of Treasury, a Money Service Business (MSB) is defined as a money transmitter or issuer, or seller or redeemer of money orders or traveler's checks, which also includes the U.S. Postal Service. MSBs are required to report suspicious activity within 30 days by filing the SAR-MSB Form when a transaction (or series of transactions) appears suspicious and exceeds $2,000. The SAR-MSB can be found at the following URL:
http://www.fincen.gov/f902256.pdf
According to the Government*, a suspicious transaction:
1. Involves funds derived from illegal activity or is intended or conducted in order to hide or disguise funds or assets derived from illegal activity; or is
2. Designed to evade the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act, whether through structuring or other means; or,
3. Serves no business or apparent lawful purpose, and the reporting business knows of no reasonable explanation for the transaction after examining all available facts
The basic business process of MSBs is to transfer money within a network of authorized agents. There is always a sender and a receiver of the money and reviewing the flow of money between the actual participants (e.g., the SUBJECTS) in the network is the basis for performing money laundering investigations. However, it is also a duty of the MSB to monitor the individual agents to ensure they remain compliant with their reporting requirements and are not trying to circumvent any controls within the system.
Recently, a review was conducted to look at the filing patterns among the agents within an MSB. Often, there will be very dominating agents (e.g., high-volume) that send to a select set of other agents in what appears to be a flow-down (i.e., money being sent or received in only one direction). Initial analytical results show that in larger networks containing complex cross-references where multiple agents send/receive with one another, a tree-like structure appears for the largest networks.
The following diagram represents the transfer of funds between different money remitter businesses (shown as ORG icons) within a geographical region that has at least 5 or more connections.
Notice that the root node for each tree-structure controls the flow-out among the rest of the agents. What is particularly interesting is that the sub-structures tend to reach out at least 3-4 levels and, in some cases, 6 levels. The money "trail" for these structures can be quite complex when tracing money through the network. Thicker lines indicate more money transfers between the respective agents.
Additionally, tests are being run to determine other "compliance" factors with respect to collecting certain types of information on the SAR-MSB by the individual agents. An agent found not complying with the law or BSA filing requirements can have their license revoked and be prohibited from conducting transactions (i.e., removed from the network). The concentration of resources on determining compliancy for the Patriot Act filing requirements is quickly expected to become a mainstream form of analytics with serious consequences for non-compliance.
* http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=104315,00.html
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