CHALLENGES A leading customs organization in Latin America was faced with a high rate of customs fraud and tax evasion on postal parcels entering and leaving the country, which resulted in a large loss in revenue, due to evasion of customs duties and taxes. The customs organization dealt with multiple, siloed systems and data sources, such as customs tariffs and HS codes, which change frequently, so achieving one unified view and extracting actionable insights was very challenging. The organization lacked predictive analytics tools that could help spot anomalies and red flags in customs paperwork, detect patterns of suspicious activity, and expose trends — all of which could allow it to proactively inspect shipments likely to be involved in customs fraud or smuggling. Instead, the organization used a random approach for its inspections, and initiated investigations only after customs violations were discovered in goods that had already arrived at the country’s points of entry. SOLUTION The organization turned to NEXYTE, Cognyte’s decision intelligence platform, with the goal of reducing customs fraud and tax evasion, and increasing revenue. NEXYTE’s customs-specific data model automatically fused data from separate sources including customs forms, incident reports, and more, to provide a unified view of all information the organization has access to. NEXYTE created enriched profiles for every customs entity of interest - including freight carriers, brokers, shipping agents, import/export companies and bills of lading - and provided analysts with the ability to easily map the connections between entities. CHALLENGES • Insufficient field personnel for inspections • Fusing and analyzing multiple, siloed data sources • Low seizure rate due to outdated risk management • Failure to meet revenue goals SOLUTION • Unified view of all data sources • Holistic profiles of customs entities • Tailored machine learning model for risk management • Analytics-driven detection of trends, anomalies, and hidden relations RESULTS • Increase of 155% in customs seizure rate • Identification of suspicious taxpayers and bills of lading • Significant improvement in revenue collection Combating Customs Fraud and Tax Evasion Case Study