FinCEN Advisory and AML Bulletin PDF Scraper

Scrape advisories, alerts, notices, fact sheets, financial trend analyses, and SAR Activity Reviews from FinCEN.gov. Returns structured red-flag indicators, typology tags, applicable industries, and the full extracted PDF text for every document — 500+ publications going back to 1999.

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FinCEN Advisory Scraper Features

• Covers all six FinCEN document families in one run — advisories, alerts, notices, fact sheets, financial trend analyses, and SAR Activity Reviews
• Downloads and parses every source PDF, no manual "open, save, repeat"
• Tags each document with typology (ransomware, sanctions evasion, human trafficking, and 25+ others), applicable industries, and geographic focus — pulled straight from the text, not guessed from the title
• Pulls the red-flag indicator list out of each document, formatted as an array your rules engine can actually consume
• Extracts SAR field references and key terms from the filing-recommendations section
• Surfaces sentences that reference OFAC, DOJ, or SDN List actions — the join point to a sanctions-screening workflow
• Filter by document type, publication year range, or a keyword on the title

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Who Uses FinCEN Advisory Data?

• AML compliance teams — reflect every new advisory in transaction-monitoring rules without reading each PDF by hand
• Crypto and fintech KYC teams — track typology updates that affect onboarding and screening logic, especially the virtual-currency-tagged advisories
• Sanctions-screening vendors — feed OFAC/SDN cross-references into an existing screening pipeline
• Compliance consultants — build a searchable archive of red-flag indicators across two decades of FinCEN guidance, instead of a bookmarks folder
• Financial-crime journalists and researchers — pull the full text and typology tags for a specific case or region without wading through the site's own navigation

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How the FinCEN Advisory Scraper Works

1. Pick which document types you want, or leave all six selected for the full corpus.
2. Optionally narrow by publication year or a title keyword.
3. The scraper fetches each matching document's PDF, extracts the text, and classifies it against a typology and industry vocabulary.
4. You get one structured record per document — title, date, PDF link, typology tags, red flags, and the full text — ready to load into a rules engine or a database.

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Input

{
  "documentTypes": ["advisory", "alert", "notice", "fact_sheet", "financial_trend_analysis", "sar_activity_review"],
  "yearFrom": 2020,
  "yearTo": 2026,
  "keywordFilter": "",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
documentTypes	array	all six (advisory, alert, notice, fact_sheet, financial_trend_analysis, sar_activity_review)	Which document families to include.
yearFrom	integer	none	Only include documents published in or after this year. Leave blank for no lower bound (earliest coverage: 1999).
yearTo	integer	none	Only include documents published in or before this year. Leave blank for the most recent publication.
keywordFilter	string	""	Case-insensitive contains filter on title/description.
maxItems	integer	10	Maximum number of documents to scrape.

Narrowing to a single document type, e.g. only alerts:

{
  "documentTypes": ["alert"],
  "maxItems": 20
}

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FinCEN Advisory Scraper Output Fields

{
  "document_id": "FIN-2026-A002",
  "document_type": "advisory",
  "title": "Joint Advisory on Non-Work Authorized Populations and Their Employers and Risks to the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System",
  "publication_date": "2026-06-05",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.fincen.gov/system/files/2026-06/FinCEN-Advisory-Non-Work-Authorized-Populations.pdf",
  "subject_typology": ["human_trafficking", "human_smuggling", "identity_theft"],
  "applicable_industries": ["banks", "money_services_businesses"],
  "geographic_focus": ["United States"],
  "red_flag_indicators": [
    "A customer presents identification documents that appear altered or inconsistent with other records on file.",
    "A customer's employer has a pattern of hiring individuals without valid work authorization."
  ],
  "suggested_sar_codes": ["SAR field 2 (\"Filing Institution Note to FinCEN\")"],
  "related_actions": ["The Department of Justice announced related enforcement actions against employers."],
  "executive_summary_text": "The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is issuing this advisory to alert financial institutions to...",
  "full_text": "...",
  "source_url": "https://www.fincen.gov/resources/advisories/fincen-advisory-fin-2026-a002"
}

Field	Type	Description
document_id	string	FinCEN's own identifier where published (e.g. FIN-2026-A002), else a stable derived id
document_type	string	One of advisory, alert, notice, fact_sheet, financial_trend_analysis, sar_activity_review
title	string	Document title or subject line
publication_date	string	ISO 8601 date where the source provides one
pdf_url	string	Direct link to the source PDF on fincen.gov
subject_typology	array	Typology tags such as ransomware, sanctions evasion, human trafficking — best-effort from the text
applicable_industries	array	Industry tags such as banks, casinos, money services businesses — best-effort from the text
geographic_focus	array	Country/region names mentioned in the document
red_flag_indicators	array	The bulleted red-flag indicators listed in the document, where present
suggested_sar_codes	array	SAR field references and key terms found in the filing-recommendations section, where present
related_actions	array	Sentences referencing OFAC, DOJ, or SDN List actions, where present
executive_summary_text	string	The first substantial paragraph of the document
full_text	string	The complete extracted text of the source PDF
source_url	string	The fincen.gov page this record was discovered on

Not every document carries every field — a two-page fact sheet rarely has a red-flag section, and older scanned documents can come back with a thinner full_text. The core fields (document_id, document_type, title, pdf_url) are populated on every record.

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FAQ

How do I scrape FinCEN advisories?

Run this actor with the document types you want, or leave the default (all six) to pull the full corpus. No FinCEN account or login is required — the advisories, alerts, and bulletins are public.

What data can I get from FinCEN.gov?

Every advisory, alert, notice, fact sheet, financial trend analysis, and SAR Activity Review FinCEN has published, going back to 1999. That's title, date, the PDF link, typology and industry tags, red-flag indicators, and the full document text.

Can I filter by document type or year?

Yes. Set documentTypes to any subset of the six families, and yearFrom/yearTo to bound the publication date. Leave both year fields blank to pull the entire date range.

Does this include SAR Activity Review issues?

Yes — document_type: "sar_activity_review" covers the SAR Activity Review series, SAR Stats issues, and the "By The Numbers" bulletins FinCEN published under the same technical-bulletins program.

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Need More Features?

Need custom fields, filters, or a different target site? File an issue or get in touch.

Why Use the FinCEN Advisory Scraper?

• Full corpus, one run — six document families and 25+ years of coverage, not just the current year's alerts.
• Pre-classified, not just downloaded — typology, industry, and red-flag tags are extracted from the text, so you're not opening PDFs to find the section you need.
• Structured for a rules engine — red-flag indicators and SAR field references come back as arrays, ready to feed a transaction-monitoring pipeline instead of a paragraph you have to re-parse.