Bank of America Was Fined $1.21 Billion After Regulators Said It Failed to Report Over $5 Billion in Suspicious Activity
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 12 minutes ago, October 14, 2026
The Treasury Department called it the third-largest penalty in its history, and it landed on the nation’s second-largest bank for letting potential money laundering go unflagged.
Regulators said Bank of America failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious activity, including $1 billion tied to national security and other priority illicit finance risks. The Treasury said the bank “prioritized its revenues” when building its compliance programs and leaned on outside tips from law enforcement and other institutions instead of catching problems through its own controls.
“When a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations, the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, exposing the entire US financial system to significant illicit finance risks,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency hit the lender with a $750 million civil penalty, the largest in the regulator’s history, citing failures to fix problems first flagged in a 2024 cease-and-desist order. The regulator called the compliance program “deficient and ineffective” and said its transaction monitoring caused delays in filing reports on billions of dollars in transactions.
The bank also paid $11.6 million to the Office of Foreign Assets Control for more than 400 apparent sanctions violations, after mistakenly processing millions in payments that broke programs targeting countries including Russia and Iran.
A Bank of America spokesperson said the company has invested billions in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to fighting financial crime, and is “far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators.”
The bank said its third-quarter results would include a non-tax-deductible charge of $1.2 billion, cutting quarterly net income by about 17 cents a share. Shares fell 1.8% in after-hours trading. The fine comes days after American Express was hit with a $350 million penalty over similar anti-money laundering shortcomings.
Stay in the loop with Thought Catalog — follow us on Facebook or visit our website.