Financial crimes

The Omaha bank says AI agents halve the time required to research fraud, sanctions violations and money-laundering alerts.

The clarification spells out what banks can share to stop scams. The Bank Policy Institute welcomed it but wants Congress to write the protection into law.

Cheungkin Lam fed customers' account details to a crew that drained their balances, including $417,300 from one account that TD had to repay.

Joseph Sanberg was handed a 168-month prison sentence for two counts of wire fraud after the celebrity-backed ecofintech collapsed last year.

Belgian prosecutors say they're finalizing charges over €500 million in suspect transactions. Wise calls the case, like its U.S. run-ins, a routine matter.

A proposal from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would require the agency to notify Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network 30 days prior to major anti-money laundering actions against stablecoin issuers. The rule would also allow issuers to directly share normally confidential information with Fincen during the enforcement process.

An automated alert system auto-closed "a very high percentage" of suspicious-activity flags at the bank, the OCC said.

The White House issued an executive order Tuesday directing the Treasury department, bank regulators and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to advise banks on "red flags" of informal work arrangements. How agencies implement the order will determine how onerous compliance will ultimately be for banks.

In a move seen to bolster his 2028 presidential run, California Governor Gavin Newsom named Rohit Chopra, the former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to lead a new oversight agency; a Pine Bluff, Arkansas, bank employee was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for bank theft; a Fairfax, Virginia, security administrator has been charged with allegedly stealing more than $6.6 million from his employer; and more in this week's banking news roundup.

Fincen just proposed the most significant reform to AML compliance in a generation, but its reporting forms are still broken. A handful of key changes would meaningfully reduce compliance burden without reducing investigative value.

Banks weighing stablecoin partnerships need to know whose playbook regulators will endorse before another major crypto theft tests the question.

The Justice Department recategorized state and federally approved cannabis products from Schedule I to Schedule III, a move that falls short of full legalization but could ignite renewed interest from banks and credit unions in servicing state-legal cannabis businesses.

U.S. banks must navigate conflicting signals as Iran's crypto toll demands and rising pig butchering scams exploit the same stablecoin and correspondent banking rails.

The Treasury Department Wednesday proposed a set of rules that would require stablecoin issuers to abide by risk-based anti-money-laundering programs similar to those that banks must employ, as well as secondary market monitoring and independent testing by issuers. 

A TD Bank expert warned RSAC attendees that criminals use cheap printers, stolen data and AI to bypass identity verification in under five minutes.

A rumored executive order that would require banks to verify the citizenship of their account holders would be incredibly burdensome for banks. It would also result in the "debanking" of untold numbers of Americans.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is charged with protecting the U.S. financial system, but its failure to implement a whistleblower program authorized in 2022 leaves the agency unable to capitalize on a key source of intelligence.

Jurors determined that Aaron Luneke, the former chief financial officer of Bank of the Valley in Nebraska, obtained millions of dollars in loans — including from his own bank — by inflating contractor bills for a new car wash business.

The criminal cases against these former 30 Under 30 honorees highlight the dangers of prioritizing hypergrowth narratives over proper due diligence.

Investors claim JPMorganChase collected fees while ignoring suspicious transfers linked to a $328 million crypto Ponzi scheme.