The Treasury Department announced enforcement actions imposing more than $1.21 billion in penalties against Bank of America on Tuesday, in what it called the third largest penalty in its history. FinCEN assessed $1.2 billion over the bank’s failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, the OCC assessed a $750 million civil money penalty for a deficient anti-money laundering programme, and OFAC settled apparent sanctions violations for $11.6 million.
Bank of America admitted that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act. FinCEN found the bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time, including more than $1 billion tied to priority illicit finance risks such as Chinese money laundering networks, fraud and potential trade based money laundering linked to the southwest border. Regulators said the bank’s own monitoring missed activity that surfaced mainly through law enforcement inquiries and referrals from other institutions, and that suspicious activity was left uninvestigated for long periods.
The OCC said the bank’s compliance programme remained deficient more than a year after a December 2024 cease and desist order, with transaction monitoring that failed across trillions of dollars in payments and staff who lacked the training to run it. OFAC’s settlement covered 475 apparent violations across programmes targeting Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics trafficking and global terrorism, which it rated non-egregious but largely not voluntarily disclosed.
The resolution requires a third party lookback to find and report transactions the bank missed, plus independent reviews of its monitoring, customer due diligence and data governance. Secretary Scott Bessent said the actions show that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. Bank shares will trade on Wednesday with the penalty public and the remediation bill still to come.