Legal issues and news

Shan Hanes, who led Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas until it failed last year, pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement by a bank officer. He now faces up to 30 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 8.

The Supreme Court decided to rule narrowly in Cantero v. Bank of America, N.A., sending the case back to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions to perform a more nuanced analysis on whether a New York escrow law unfairly discriminates against national banks.

A federal judge in Texas is locked in a back-and-forth with an appeals court over whether the industry's challenge to a cap on credit card late fees should be moved to Washington, D.C.

Early Warning, which operates the payment network, says the rate of reported fraud is less than a tenth of one percent. Yet stories of consumers who have fallen victim to scams and lost money as a result abound. 

Executives at the Toronto-based bank said last year that they planned to add 150 branches in the United States. But when pressed on Thursday, they could not say how much they'll scale back their ambitions due to investigations over TD's anti-money laundering practices.

Executives from JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are expected to get grilled in Congress this summer over victims of Zelle scams who don't get reimbursed. A Senate panel has spent much of the last year examining fraud on the bank-owned payments network.

It is increasingly clear that joining a risk consortium is the best defense banks have against fraudsters who are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence.

The payday loan industry is looking to extend its years-long legal fight with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It's planning to ask a federal appeals court to revisit a ruling that upheld a proposed limit on how often payday lenders can try to pull money from their customers' accounts.

Executives at the Canadian bank, which recently took a major provision for potential fines, say they're working to shore up anti-money laundering controls. At the same time, they're preparing employees and investors for an expensive slog as they work to satisfy U.S. officials.

The Supreme Court issued an opinion Thursday morning that was unequivocal in its view that Congress is constitutionally empowered to fund agencies with open-ended and indirect funding mechanisms, overruling a 5th Circuit opinion from 2022 that found that executive branches must be subject to direct Congressional appropriations.