From Amazon Layoffs to Financial Crime: How One Professional Successfully Changed Career

Reading time: ~6 minutes · For career switchers, AML, sanctions and fraud professionals

“I knew I could do it. My brain had been trained to spot patterns. I just needed to learn how those patterns applied to financial crime.”

Over the past few years I’ve received hundreds of messages from people asking the same question: “Can I move into Financial Crime if I don’t come from banking?”

The answer is yes.

But it isn’t always straightforward.

Recently someone reached out to me to share her story. She asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of her work, but she was happy for me to share her experience if it could help others.

I think her journey contains some valuable lessons for anyone considering a career in AML, sanctions, fraud or financial crime investigations.

An unexpected career change

Before moving into financial crime, she spent almost a decade working for Amazon in its Intellectual Property Risk function.

Her work involved investigating counterfeit goods, verifying supply chains, conducting enhanced due diligence on brand owners, analysing fraud patterns and enforcing intellectual property rights.

Although it wasn’t banking, it was still investigative work.

She learned how to:

• Identify suspicious behaviour
• Investigate businesses
• Verify identities
• Understand ownership structures
• Assess risk
• Recognise evolving fraud patterns

Looking back, many of those skills would later become highly relevant in financial crime.

Then came the layoffs

Like many professionals around the world, she lost her job during Amazon’s restructuring.

Fortunately, the redundancy package gave her several months to think about her next move.

When she began searching for another role, she quickly noticed something. Almost every “Risk” position she found was within banking or financial services.

There was just one problem. She didn’t have a banking background.

The challenge of changing industries

One point she raised really stood out to me.

She said that moving from e-commerce risk into financial crime is surprisingly difficult. Banks and consulting firms often prefer candidates who already have experience in banking, payments or financial services.

For someone with more than a few years of experience outside those industries, changing direction can actually become harder rather than easier.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It simply means you have to convince employers that your existing experience is transferable.

That’s exactly what she focused on.

Learning a completely new industry

She started with the basics.

She read the Bank Secrecy Act. She studied OFAC sanctions. She worked through sections of the USA PATRIOT Act. She researched the regulatory agencies involved in financial crime.

The challenge wasn’t finding information. It was understanding it.

Government publications are comprehensive, but they’re written for regulatory purposes rather than learning. She often found herself copying paragraphs into ChatGPT just to better understand what they meant.

Then she discovered my YouTube channel.

Instead of trying to decode lengthy legal documents, she found short videos explaining one topic at a time. There wasn’t one particular video that changed everything. She simply worked through the entire library.

As she put it:

“Earlier I needed ChatGPT to explain almost every sentence from government websites. Your videos broke each topic down into something I could understand.”

Connecting old skills to a new career

Perhaps the smartest thing she did during interview preparation was reframing her previous experience.

Rather than saying “I’ve never worked in banking,” she explained how she had already spent years investigating risk. For example:

• When sellers suddenly changed product categories
• When pricing became too good to be true
• When supply chains changed unexpectedly
• When ownership structures looked unusual

These were all examples of risk-based thinking. The concepts were different. The mindset wasn’t.

That helped interviewers understand that although she lacked banking experience, she already thought like an investigator.

Landing the role

Today she works in financial crime, supporting major North American financial institutions. Her work now includes:

• Transaction monitoring
• Due diligence
• Enhanced due diligence
• Sanctions screening
• SAR narrative writing
• Financial crime investigations

For confidentiality reasons she asked me not to disclose her employer or discuss her projects in more detail.

Her advice for anyone trying to make the same transition

After reading all her answers, several themes appeared repeatedly.

Learn the laws

Don’t just memorise terminology. Understand the legislation that sits behind AML. Knowing why banks have certain obligations makes investigations much easier to understand.

Read the job description carefully

She noticed many interview candidates ignored the legislation and terminology mentioned in job advertisements.

Instead of treating the job description as a checklist, use it as your study guide. If a regulation or acronym appears repeatedly, learn it before the interview.

Focus on transferable skills

Even if you’ve never worked in banking, you may already have experience in:

• Investigations
• Fraud
• Compliance
• Risk management
• Due diligence
• Intelligence gathering
• Identity verification

Employers need to understand how those skills apply to financial crime. Don’t make them connect the dots for you.

Think long term

She also shared an interesting observation about the Indian market. Professionals from non-banking backgrounds may find it easier to enter financial crime through consulting firms, payment processors or outsourced investigation teams before moving into larger banks later in their careers.

While that advice reflects her own experience in India, the broader principle applies in many countries.

Your first financial crime role doesn’t need to be your dream role. Sometimes it’s simply the bridge to where you ultimately want to go.

One final thought

At the end of our conversation she told me something that genuinely meant a lot.

After securing her role, she referred a former Amazon colleague. She shared the same videos, notes and resources she had used during her own preparation.

Today, both of them work in financial crime.

Stories like this remind me why I continue producing educational content every week.

Financial crime needs talented people. Many of them already have the investigative mindset. Sometimes they simply need someone to show them how their existing experience fits into a completely different industry.

If that’s where you are today, I hope this story gives you confidence that career transitions are possible.

They require work, persistence and continuous learning. But they are absolutely possible.

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Author’s note: The professional featured in this article requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of her work. The story has been published with her permission and reviewed by her before publication.