Patent ID: 7769682

Claim:
A method for determining suspect entities engaged in financial transactions, said method comprising the steps of: a) selecting a focus entity F and a plurality of peripheral entities, each peripheral entity having one or more financial transaction with F within a period of time T; b) partitioning the period of time T into a plurality of time intervals; c) generating, by a processor of a computer system, a unifocused directed graph for each time interval of the plurality of time intervals, each directed graph consisting of a focus node, a plurality of peripheral nodes, and edges between the focus node and the peripheral nodes, the focus node representing F, each peripheral node representing a peripheral entity having at least one directed financial transaction of said one or more directed financial transactions with F within the time interval, each edge having a weight, said weight being a function of the at least one directed financial transaction between F and the peripheral node within the time interval; d) determining, from the directed graphs or from a representation of the directed graphs, whether any of said edges are out-of-norm edges, said determining including applying edge-selection criteria to the weights associated with the edges of the directed graphs; e) if any of said edges are so determined to be out-of-norm edges then identifying at least one potential suspect entity from the out-of-norm edges, followed by deriving at least one suspect entity from the at least one potential suspect entity; and after performing step e) at level 1: performing steps b), c), d), and e) to level L for each suspect entity determined in step e) at levels 1, 2, . . . L−1, wherein F represents said each suspect entity for which steps b), c), d), and e) are performed, and wherein L is at least 2.