ACAMS Southern California Chapter May 2026 Event: Safeguarding Human Rights: Detecting and Preventing Human Trafficking during the FIFA World Cup

Edward Gerovian is the Senior Vice President and Head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) at Bank of Hope, the largest Korean American bank in the United States, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. He leads the Bank’s enterprise-wide FIU operations for a $20 billion institution with 74 branches nationwide, overseeing complex financial crime risk management, investigations, and compliance governance.

Edward has 25 years of experience in financial management roles within various Risk, Compliance, BSA and Fraud departments in Banking.  Prior to joining Bank of Hope, he served as Deputy BSA Officer at California United Bank (now Banc of California).  His earlier roles include leadership positions at OneWest Bank (now CIT), BNY Mellon, and Countrywide, where he developed deep expertise in AML operations, regulatory enforcement readiness, and financial crime risk mitigation.

Edward holds an MBA in Finance from the University of La Verne (2002) and maintains multiple professional credentials, including Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator (CFCI).

He is an active contributor to the Anti-Financial Crime community, serving on the El Camino Real HIFCA Coalition (HSI Consortium), PwC AML Investigations Roundtable and the Content Development and Validation Consortium for ACAMS’ Certified Transaction Monitoring Associate (CTMA) certification. Edward has also spoken at CCBN, IAFCI, and ACAMS Southern California Chapter events, sharing insights on AML framework modernization, fraud trends, and FIU best practices.

Jim Isajewicz is Data Science Manager with TRSS where he has worked since 2017. Prior to that, Jim was an Investigations Manager with the Florida Department of Health Investigative Services Unit (ISU), leading the Orlando field office. Jim started working on the Illicit Massage Industry as a Massage Establishment inspector with the ISU, where he saw first-hand the challenging conditions victims of massage-based sex trafficking endure. When he came to TRSS, he worked with a team to use that experience to create a novel approach to understanding IMI networks using data, empowering enforcement agencies with the ability to focus on the organized criminal enterprise, and not on the victim.