Luciano Juvinski, Haochen Li, Alessio Brini
Global illicit fund flows exceed an estimated $3.1 trillion annually, with stablecoins emerging as a preferred laundering medium due to their liquidity. While decentralized protocols increasingly adopt zero-knowledge proofs to obfuscate transaction graphs, centralized stablecoins remain critical transparent choke points for compliance. Leveraging this persistent visibility, this study analyzes an Ethereum dataset to establish an empirical baseline for behavioral AML detection. Our findings demonstrate that domain-informed tree ensemble models achieve higher Macro-F1 score, significantly outperforming graph neural networks, which struggle with the increasing fragmentation of transaction networks. The model's interpretability goes beyond binary detection, successfully dissecting distinct typologies: it differentiates the complex, high-velocity dispersion of cybercrime syndicates from the constrained, static footprints left by sanctioned entities. This methodological approach provides actionable insights that align with industry shifts toward deterministic verification, informing the auditability and compliance requirements under regulations such as the EU's MiCA and the U.S. GENIUS Act while minimizing unjustified asset freezes. By providing a high-precision behavioral classification of suspicious wallets, this approach contributes to raising the economic cost of financial misconduct while informing compliance practice under emerging stablecoin regulations.