Legal issues and news

If the agency’s treatment of Bank of America is extended to the rest of the industry, it will cause widespread confusion and excessive regulatory burden.

The operators of a Texas payments firm with ties to the U.K. pleaded guilty in the U.S. to money laundering failures after their business facilitated the shipping of $160 million to Nigeria over about three years.

At a minimum, the court’s ruling will create confusion and invite endless litigation.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which levied the penalties, say Bank of America unfairly froze customer accounts in its effort to stop rampant fraud in a program that distributed pandemic aid through prepaid debit cards.

The cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the latest casualty of a $2 trillion crash that has wiped out some of the industry’s biggest names and exposed hundreds of thousands of individual investors to steep losses.

Citigroup has won part of its appeal in a discrimination suit brought by a former banker who was laid off after being called “old” at the age of 55.

As Celsius Network’s customer withdrawal freeze enters a full month, the beleaguered crypto lender has paid back a string of debts totaling more than $900 million during the same period to decentralized-finance platforms. 

Searching Google for information about student loan forgiveness surfaces advertisements that either appear to violate content policies or lead people to scams, according to a watchdog group, increasing public confusion as the Biden administration mulls actions on student debt.

The technology billionaire Romesh Wadhwani’s artificial intelligence software company agreed to buy BAE Systems' financial crime detection business, NetReveal.

Securities regulators in Texas and Alabama are expanding their investigations into Voyager Digital and Celsius Network to account for new information arising from the implosions of the two crypto-lending firms. 

After the Supreme Court struck down an Environmental Protection Agency rule, legal observers are wondering how far the justices will go to rein in the authority of financial regulators. A Securities and Exchange Commission proposal on climate risk disclosures could become a test case.

U.S. senators led by Democrats Bob Menendez, Elizabeth Warren and Jack Reed told seven of the country’s biggest banks they must do more for consumers defrauded by scammers on Zelle, the person-to-person payments network the firms jointly own.

The Department of Justice is prosecuting ex-JPMorgan Chase bankers under federal racketeering law, a move public interest advocates hope could lead to more accountability for financial firms.

Authentic Brands Group, which owns and licenses brands like Forever 21, has settled its lawsuit against Bolt Financial. The agreement ends months of legal wrangling between the troubled payments startup and its largest active customer, which had claimed that Bolt’s technology was faulty. 

An independent investigation found no evidence of a pact with Wells Fargo’s attorney but omitted mention of the other big questions emanating from the case.

The retail giant ignored fraudsters’ use of its money transfers in consumer scams that cost victims hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Walmart called the agency’s lawsuit “factually flawed and legally baseless.”

The lender has been struggling with a series of scandals that have sent its shares to near-record lows, and may face a second criminal indictment in an unrelated case later this year.

The fintech Wise said the Financial Conduct Authority has commenced an investigation into Chief Executive Officer Kristo Kaarmann almost a year after he was fined by HMRC for deliberately defaulting on his taxes.

A panel of FINRA arbitrators unanimously ordered the award against the megabank based on Erin Ann Daly’s claims of gender-based discrimination.

Karl K. Klessig provided a fraudulent loan document and forged a signature in an application last year to acquire control of Golden Pacific Bancorp, according to the Federal Reserve.