Follow the Money

FollowTheMoney (FtM) is a data model for financial crime investigations and document forensics.

It contains definitions of the entities relevant in such research (like people or companies) and tools that let you generate, validate, and export such data easily. Entities can reference each other, creating a graph of relevant relationships. The ontology defined by FtM also includes a model for various types of documents that might be used as evidence in investigations.

What is FtM used for?

FtM has multiple use cases in investigative data analysis:

It's used as a core data model by software like OpenAleph, a data platform that securely stores large amounts of data and makes them searchable for easily collaboration, and yente, a screening engine for sanctions compliance.
As a data exchange format, it is used to transfer structured datasets between different systems in a semantically well-defined manner.
As a part of an ETL pipeline, FtM provides extensive tooling for data cleaning and normalisation for field types from person names, phone numbers, tax or company identifiers, and so on.
As an SDK, it can be used to quickly draw up small scripts and applications that analyse data in the context of an investigation.

To learn more, explore the projects using FtM and the FtM-based libraries and tools.

"You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you." — *"You start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you."* Image: HBO.