Legal issues and news

The Biden administration is poised to put its stamp on the banking regulatory landscape, but there are few slam-dunk solutions that will satisfy both the industry and a vocal Democratic base.

Robinhood Markets' cryptocurrency arm was fined $30 million by New York's financial regulator after the brokerage was accused of violating anti-money-laundering and cybersecurity rules.

The San Francisco megabank plans to reinstate guidance that drew scrutiny following revelations that women and nonwhite candidates were interviewed for jobs that had been reserved for someone else.

Twitter subpoenaed records from Morgan Stanley and other financial firms as part of its legal fight with Elon Musk over his canceled $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

Visa said it believes it’s an “improper defendant” in the case.

Former Goldman Sachs Group vice president Brijesh Goel pleaded not guilty to charges that he illegally traded on confidential information he obtained while working at the investment bank.

U.S. brokerage units of JPMorgan Chase and UBS Group agreed to pay a combined $2.1 million in penalties to settle allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission that they didn’t have the proper policies and programs in place to prevent customer identity theft.

The jury at an upcoming trial can draw an adverse inference about evidence destruction by the Chicago-based bank, a federal judge ruled. The plaintiff is seeking $1.9 billion from the bank, in addition to punitive damages and other funds in a bankruptcy-related case stemming from a Ponzi scheme.

A former Goldman Sachs Group banker was accused of passing insider trading information to a squash buddy, part of a group of nine people charged Monday by federal prosecutors in New York.

Affinity Credit Union in Iowa is taking the tech giant to court over the levies issuers pay to have their cards work in its mobile wallet.

The National Crime Agency has seen a surge in so-called suspicious activity reports filed by banks and other regulated institutions in the U.K. since February. 

New types of financial products designed for the underserved can also be susceptible to scamsters, Juniper Research found, mirroring the Federal Trade Commission's concerns.

JPMorgan Chase must face a trial over claims by a former vice president in its anti-corruption unit that she was marginalized, mistreated and fired from the bank for complaining about compliance failures.

In one scheme, criminals impersonated a financial institution and defrauded victims of $3.7 million. The FBI advised banks to warn customers about such scams.

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.