Silent Eight x The Dark Money Files: James Booth in Conversation with Ray Blake

In this special festive edition crossover, James Booth from Silent Eight sits down with Ray Blake from The Dark Money Files for a conversation that blends storytelling, technology, and the realities of life inside modern AML.

What begins as light end-of-year banter soon branches into the unexpected: Ray’s favourite books, what he’s been watching on Netflix, and even the curious state of his Amazon shopping list. It’s a conversation that reveals the human side of the voice behind The Dark Money Files — funny, candid and brilliantly off-centre.

Together, they unpack what it truly means to be an MLRO today, the pressure and politics that shape the role, and what good leadership looks like when the stakes are high and the expectations even higher. They dive into memorable cases, missed red flags, and the patterns that keep surfacing no matter how sophisticated the criminals become.

And of course, no festive edition would be complete without a look forward. James and Ray debate how technology and AI are reshaping AML, where the human element still wins, and what the industry should expect from 2026 and beyond.

It’s thoughtful, funny, unfiltered and, at moments, unexpectedly personal — the crossover episode that AML professionals didn’t know they needed to end the year.

Grab a mince pie, pour a coffee, and settle in.