Financial crimes

Needham and Provident banks received all regulatory approvals and merge date; JPMorganChase hired veteran tech dealmaker Kevin Brunner from Bank of America; RBC Capital Markets will expand its presence in the equity derivatives market with two senior hires from UBS; and more in this week's banking news roundup.

Senate Banking Committee Republicans, led by committee chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., introduced a bill that would raise the mandatory reporting threshold for certain currency transactions, a move meant to ease banks' anti-money laundering compliance obligations.

Coordinated sanctions target two networks behind so-called pig butchering scams, human trafficking and money laundering for North Korean cybercrime groups.

A new survey finds that fraud losses have jumped significantly in the last year, with digital channels and check fraud posing the biggest threats.

A new interagency guidance clarifies when banks must report suspicious activity, easing compliance workloads and narrowing the reporting requirements to focus on higher-value cases.

The Toronto-based bank announced enterprise-wide and business-specific revenue and expense targets, almost exactly one year after it was hit with more than $3 billion in fines and an asset cap for money-laundering-related blunders.

Prosecutors had asked the judge for a stiff sentence, saying that Javice committed a "brazen fraud" when she convinced JPMorgan to pay far more for her company than it was worth.

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is seeking public comment on a survey of anti-money-laundering compliance costs from a variety of nonbanks, including casinos, insurers, lenders and other nonbanks, a possible precursor to deregulatory proposals down the road.

We don't need to reinvent banking to support cannabis. But we do need a clear, federally coordinated compliance framework tailored to the sector. That means establishing uniform standards.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined prosecution after BofA Securities self-reported the violations and fixed major compliance gaps.