Legal issues and news

After a California woman spent more than a decade obtaining reparations for Nazi plundering of her family's belongings, the money disappeared from her bank account. Her saga highlights a gap in fraud cases between what consumers expect from their banks and what those banks are in a position to deliver.

A veteran Canadian bank analyst says Toronto-Dominion Bank's role in an alleged money-laundering scheme has made the "worst-case scenario" more likely — a huge fine for the lender and years of restrictions on its U.S. growth.

Gary Farro's testimony focused on both the banking activity of Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who paid $130,000 to an adult film actress in 2016, and First Republic Bank's due diligence work.

Toronto-Dominion failed to submit suspicious-transaction reports in cases where it was reasonable to suspect the transfers were tied to money laundering or terrorist financing, along with other violations, according to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering new rules covering the collection and sale of some consumer data. If it's not careful, the agency could be inadvertently assisting identity thieves.

A 50% growth in losses from check fraud last year is pushing bankers in Illinois to ask regulators for a joint supervisory guidance and tougher enforcement of large banks' "know your customer" compliance.

Toronto-Dominion Bank has taken an initial provision of $450 million in connection with U.S. investigations into its anti-money-laundering practices and said it expects additional penalties to come.

In this month's roundup of top tech news: the impact of Synapse's bankruptcy on the banking-as-a-service industry, large language models best suited for banks, Discover deploys generative artificial intelligence in its contact center and more.

While home lenders are seeing a decrease in issues coming through mobile channels, phone fraud spiked last year, accounting for 28% of losses, a new report found.

The ABA is testing an information-exchange network to allow banks to share their fraud data with each other. Companies including Baselayer are also building solutions.