Bank of America Hit With $1.2 Billion Anti-Money-Laundering Penalty

US regulators announced more than $1.21 billion in penalties against Bank of America on 13 October over failures in its anti-money-laundering and sanctions controls.

Treasury said the bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time. Over $1 billion involved activity linked to national-security and other priority risks. Suspicious transactions are not the same as proven money laundering.

The largest component is a $1.2 billion penalty from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. This credits a $750 million penalty imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; the two amounts should not be added together.

A separate $11.6 million settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control covers 475 apparent sanctions violations. The agency classified those violations as non-egregious.

According to Treasury, the bank admitted willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, including failures in correspondent-account due diligence and suspicious-activity reporting. The OCC said compliance shortcomings continued after a December 2024 order requiring improvements.

Bank of America told Reuters it had invested billions of dollars in technology and assigned thousands of employees to fighting financial crime. It said remediation was well advanced and it remained committed to completing the work required by regulators.

The response goes beyond a fine. Treasury said the bank must work with a third party to identify previously undetected suspicious transactions and undergo independent reviews of key controls. The case highlights the cost of monitoring failures even at one of the world’s largest banks.

Sources: Reuters; U.S. Treasury; Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Enforcement announcement: 13 October 2026.

Archival photograph: Bank of America branch, Eagan, Minnesota, 19 January 2018. Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Cropped to 16:9.