U.S. Regulators Hit Bank of America With $1.2 Billion in AML and Sanctions Penalties in Third-Largest FinCEN Fine on Record
U.S. Regulators Hit Bank of America With $1.2 Billion in AML and Sanctions Penalties in Third-Largest FinCEN Fine on Record #
Three U.S. federal agencies jointly levied more than $1.21 billion in penalties against Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest lender, over years of failures in its anti-money laundering program and breaches of sanctions obligations, in an enforcement action the Treasury Department announced Tuesday.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) assessed the $1.2 billion penalty, the third-largest in its history, behind only the $3.4 billion imposed on Binance in 2023 and the $1.3 billion levied against TD Bank in 2024. That total includes a $750 million civil money penalty from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which described it as the largest fine the regulator has ever assessed. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added a further $11.6 million settlement covering apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs, including those targeting Iran, Russia, narcotics trafficking, and global terrorism.
According to the official FinCEN announcement, the bank failed to mitigate and report priority national security risks, specifically activity linked to Chinese money laundering networks and illicit financial flows along the southwest border. Regulators found that Bank of America failed to file timely suspicious activity reports covering more than $5 billion in transactions, with more than $1 billion of that sum tied to national security or high-priority risk categories. Treasury also concluded that the bank had delegated a substantial portion of its proactive detection and reporting responsibilities to third parties such as law enforcement agencies and correspondent banks, rather than maintaining adequate in-house capabilities.
The OCC noted that the bank had been operating under a December 2024 cease-and-desist order requiring it to remediate longstanding BSA/AML deficiencies. Despite nearly two years under that order, the regulator said management had failed to ensure the bank’s compliance program was properly staffed or structured, and that widespread internal control breakdowns persisted.
As part of its resolution with FinCEN, Bank of America admitted that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act, going beyond the non-admission language typical in large regulatory settlements. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the penalties were intended to signal that institutions of any size are not exempt from AML and sanctions obligations, and that failures at systemically important banks carry risks for the financial system as a whole.
Bank of America said it would record a non-tax-deductible charge of $1.2 billion in its third-quarter results, with an estimated earnings-per-share impact of approximately 17 cents. The announcement came the day before the bank was due to report quarterly earnings.
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