October 13, 2026
Third-Largest Penalty in Treasury History; Largest in OCC History

WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced enforcement actions imposing more than $1.21 billion in penalties against Bank of America (“the Bank”), the second-largest bank in the United States, for violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws. These actions include the third-largest penalty in Treasury history and the largest in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) history.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) assessed a $1.2 billion penalty for the Bank’s failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese Money Laundering Networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.
The OCC assessed a $750 million civil money penalty for the Bank’s deficient and ineffective BSA/AML (anti-money laundering) compliance program.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced an $11.6 million settlement agreement with the Bank over apparent violations of numerous sanctions programs, including on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and global terrorism.
“Financial institutions are on the front lines of protecting our economic and national security,” said Secretary Scott Bessent. “When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks. Today’s actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.”

Together, these actions underscore the importance of effectively complying with U.S. AML/CFT and sanctions requirements. Given the converging nature of AML/CFT and sanctions-related risks, financial institutions should ensure their AML and sanctions compliance efforts are effectively integrated and mutually reinforcing.

FAILURE TO REPORT OVER $5 BILLION IN SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY TO FINCEN
As part of its resolution with FinCEN, Bank of America admits that it willfully violated the BSA and failed to (1) implement and maintain an AML program that met the minimum requirements of the BSA and FinCEN’s implementing regulations, (2) conduct due diligence for correspondent accounts for foreign financial institutions, and (3) file suspicious activity reports (SARs).

The central failures identified through FinCEN’s investigation involved deficiencies related to Bank of America’s suspicious transaction identification and reporting and customer due diligence (CDD) processes. As these issues arose, Bank of America prioritized its revenues and minimized the impact on its required compliance resources. The nature and extent of the Bank’s resulting reliance on law enforcement inquiries, requests by other financial institutions, and similar interventions over its own internal, automated controls to identify potentially suspicious activity meant that the Bank effectively outsourced to third parties a substantial portion of its proactive detection and reporting obligations. The Bank also allowed suspicious activity to accumulate uninvestigated for extended periods without investigation, resulting in late reporting of limited utility to law enforcement.

Bank of America maintained this approach and failed to take meaningful action even in the face of testing that highlighted significant problems. Similarly, the Bank’s CDD processes failed to account for customers’ extensive reliance on payments from unknown third parties. The Bank failed to timely and meaningfully respond to mounting red flags involving these customers—including potential ties to narcotics trafficking proceeds—even after compliance personnel escalated concerns related to possible trade-based money laundering and fraud.

As a result of these failures, Bank of America failed to timely report to FinCEN over $5 billion dollars in suspicious transactions, with over $1 billion of this activity implicating national security-related and other priority illicit finance risks, including suspicious transactions indicative of Chinese Money Laundering Networks, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering with a substantial nexus to the southwest border.

The Consent Order published today requires Bank of America to work with a third party to complete a lookback to identify and report to FinCEN suspicious transactions that went undetected due to the failures noted above. Bank of America also must undergo an independent review of the effectiveness of its suspicious activity monitoring, CDD, and foreign correspondent account due diligence programs, as well as its data governance framework as it pertains to information used in its AML program. The independent reviews are tailored to the violations and will evaluate the effectiveness of Bank of America’s AML program in addressing priority risks, including (1) the U.S. Southwest border, cartels, and potential narcotics trafficking; (2) Iran; and (3) Russia.


https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0657/

Gotta keep those dividends up.

That's really gonna sour the mood during tomorrow's 8:30 AM Earnings Call by the 'Bank of Amigos'.

In other news, customers brace for increases in Banking Fees for FY27, set to go into effect on January 1st!

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
Gotta keep those dividends up.

And pay that 0.01% APY on checking accounts.

BoA has been a criminal organization for many years.

When I was in detectives, I shared an office with a financial crimes guy. It wasn’t unusual for him to be tracking money though accounts at banks, particularly pass through accounts, that would have 10-15 million pass through in a month.

And BoA protected the scammers, slow rolled court orders and usually responded “oooops there’s no money in the account now” mysteriously. As I recall BoA was the go to for Somali and Nigerian scammers to move money around and eventually off shore.

quote:

Originally posted by Leemur:
BoA has been a criminal organization for many years.

And the biggest criminal organization didn't get it's share, so they're taking it now.