Legal issues and news

Researchers showed a message with no return address slips past Reject Direct Send. Credit unions were told to close this kind of gap in 2021.

Banks say the cost and complexity of anti-money laundering compliance — including enhanced due diligence and filing suspicious activity reports — is a major barrier to serving cannabis-related businesses.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has barred 51 people from working with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this year, the most suspensions in any calendar year.

IDScan.net removed the pages naming its bank and credit union integrations after KrebsOnSecurity traced 153 million license scans to the company.

The controlling owner of Santa Fe-based Century Financial Services Corp. wound up in bankruptcy court. Now his 71% stake is on the verge of being sold to an Oklahoma bank.

The billion-dollar Dallas bank had been cited for money laundering concerns, and its recent conversion to a national charter drew sharp criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

One of the benefits of the Clarity Act is that it would codify much of digital asset firms' anti-money-laundering responsibilities. This is good news for banks that have been understandably nervous about counterparty risk.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission asked a federal court to drop a suit filed by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange challenging the agency's decision to let Kalshi offer bitcoin perpetual futures contracts, known as perps.

Regulators issued a joint statement Wednesday clarifying that banks can discuss facts surrounding suspicious activity with customers so long as they do not disclose the existence of a suspicious activity report explicitly. 

Erin Piacenti, 32, was a vice president at Bank of America and the mother of a five-month-old baby. On her way home from work, she was stabbed to death in what New York police called a "random and unprovoked attack."

A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit last week allowing Nevada to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi creates a split with the 3rd Circuit, meaning the Supreme Court will ultimately have to settle the issue.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff called the agreement "fair, reasonable and adequate," clearing the way for lawyers to begin distributing money to about 90 women who were sexually abused or trafficked by Epstein and the people around him.

Five payment companies were named as defendants in a case that could set a precedent for both prediction markets and the financial firms working with them.

A lawsuit accusing U.S. Bank of harassing and discriminating against its former head of AI can proceed following a federal magistrate judge's ruling. The suit's defamation and blacklisting claims, however, were thrown out.

A former Democratic congressman will serve as vice president of wholesale banking at Truist Financial; Bank of America's $72.5 million settlement with sex trafficking victims of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein is approved by a New York federal judge; HDFC plans to challenge the bankruptcy resolution involving a personal guarantee by media tycoon Subhash Chandra; and more in this week's banking news roundup.

Attackers are adding small banks and credit unions to their target lists, and a valid login is no longer proof the customer authorized the transfer.

The checks were drawn on accounts at JPMorganChase, Citibank, BMO, Stellar Bank and Amegy Bank. The largest single check ran just over $1.5 million.

Most Americans are seeing their expenses go up, and lots of them are changing their spending habits as a result, which is sapping the economy's momentum.

Thomas Eide's CB Surety ran small charges on prepaid cards to dilute clients' charge-back ratios, keeping open the accounts banks would have closed.