FinCEN

The Treasury Department on Wednesday named Kenneth A. Blanco, a longtime criminal prosecutor with the Justice Department, the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

First Green Bank in Florida started researching the business after its chairman saw how medical marijuana had helped his wife cope with a severe injury. The bank is now turning a profit a year after adding its first pot-related client -- and there could be lessons there for credit unions.

The Florida bank started researching the business after Ken LaRoe, its chairman, saw how medical marijuana had helped his wife cope with a severe injury. First Green is now turning a profit on this business a year after adding its first pot-related client.

Nothing like revelations of a client’s Ponzi scheme that lead to your bank paying $4 million in anti-money-laundering fines. That’s what happened at Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust, but its CEO argues its compliance overhaul has given the bank a competitive advantage in cosmopolitan New York and South Florida.

The fine for BTC-e was the Treasury’s first action against a money-services business located in a foreign country, and the second against a virtual currency exchange.

The nation’s largest state set out to bring a once-illicit industry into the financial mainstream but is now running into a Washington, D.C.-size barrier.

The beneficial ownership regulation, meant to catch financial criminals, has produced data that is useful in making small-business loans, LexisNexis Risk Solutions says.

Unlike other “suspicious activity report” categories, a new proposal to add a “cyberevent” category would require institutions to detect and report digital mischief whether directed at a customer’s account or the bank itself.

A trade group owned by the nation's largest banks wants Congress to require state governments to collect information about the true ownership of the companies they incorporate. Such a law could reduce the banking industry’s cost of complying with anti-money-laundering rules.

Any money laundering investigation could ultimately entangle banks that have done business with President Trump and his various firms over the years.

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said Merchants failed to properly monitor money-services businesses that had ownership ties with bank insiders.

The Clearing House asks Fincen to do more to fight AML; two federal courts side with consumer agency in separate cases, including question about its constitutionality