BofA Warns “Enforcement Action” By Feds Possible Over Money Laundering, Zelle

A little more than two weeks after Toronto-Dominion Bank pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges and paid $3 billion in fines and other penalties to the Department of Justice and financial regulators for failing to monitor money laundering operations of fentanyl drug traffickers and other criminals, the investigation into suspected money laundering at major banks appears to have expanded to the US.

Bank of America revealed in a filing on Tuesday that it’s in talks with several federal regulators “in relation to certain aspects of the Corporation’s Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance programs (Programs), including transaction monitoring, training, governance, and customer due diligence.”

“In cooperation with regulators, the Corporation has been, and plans to continue, implementing enhancements to these Programs. The Corporation is continuing discussions with its regulators about the Programs, and resolution of these discussions may include one or more public orders by the regulators,” BofA continued.

BofA is responding to an inquiry from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau into electronic payments on the Zelle payment network.

“The CFPB staff has initiated discussions with the Corporation to pursue a resolution of the inquiry or file an enforcement action. The Corporation is evaluating next steps, including litigation,” the bank said.

The filing did not mention specifics about potential AML issues. However, the TD Bank case, where the Canadian bank chose profits over AML compliance, allowed fentanyl and narcotics trafficking operations to use banking services.

In early September, we cited a conversation with Sam Cooper, an investigative journalist behind the Substack “The Bureau,” and David Asher, a former senior investigator for the State Department, in which Asher revealed, “And most of what we’re seeing is coming from this TD Bank case, and there’s a lot more. We’ll see which one of the big four US banks gets named next.”

At the time, we even questioned if AML investigations were pending at major US banks and potentially one of the reasons Buffett was dumping shares in the bank.

More broadly, AML investigation across multiple North American banks comes ahead of a potential Trump win in the White House. The former president said Tuesday that he would “seize assets” of drug cartels for their drug death catastrophe, killing 100,000 Americans per year. In other words, Trump is indirectly saying that if he wins – the feds will be disrupting ‘command & control’ networks (fin networks) of drug cartels …