Financial crimes

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.

Armed heists are becoming less common, but the overall number of robbery attempts has ticked back up in recent years. The opioid epidemic is a likely reason, according to an industry expert.

Husband and wife claim they were fired for raising concerns about the bank’s sales practices; commercial mortgage-backed securities on pace to top last year’s volume.

Hackers are stealing enthusiasts’ phone numbers, then changing the passwords to clean out their financial accounts; bank makes pledge to human rights groups.

David McLaughlin, founder and CEO of QuantaVerse, discusses how artificial intelligence can improve anti-money-laundering compliance; the problems of de-risking and "defensive filing" of suspicious activity reports; the Clearing House's proposal to reduce banks' AML costs; and more.

The San Francisco bank says it's making strides in regaining the trust of its customers, but winning over new ones — as evidenced by a 9% decline in retail banking profits — remains a struggle.

The report in the New York Post alleges that the bank violated anti-money-laundering laws by filing incorrect call reports to hide loans made to foreign nationals.