Treasury Fines Bank of America $1.21 Billion for Money-Laundering, Sanctions Failures

WASHINGTON, The Treasury Department imposed more than $1.21 billion in fines on Bank of America on Tuesday, saying the nation's second-largest bank willfully violated anti-money-laundering statutes and federal sanctions law over a sustained period.

The enforcement package is the third-largest penalty in Treasury history and the largest ever recorded by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to a Treasury statement reviewed by ETL Newswire.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in a statement released Tuesday, said the bank's failures carried systemic risk. "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 U.S. financial system to significant illicit finance risks," Bessent said, as reported by PBS NewsHour.

The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, assessed a $1.2 billion penalty for what it called the bank's failure to identify and report priority national security threats. According to a statement cited by PBS NewsHour, those threats included Chinese money-laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.

Treasury said Bank of America failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions to FinCEN, according to Al Jazeera's account of the Treasury release. Regulators further found that the bank, in an effort to protect revenue, "effectively outsourced" a substantial part of its proactive detection and reporting duties to third parties, according to Bloomberg.

A separate $750 million civil penalty from the OCC forms the core of that total. That figure is the largest the OCC has imposed in its history, according to the Treasury statement. Bank of America also reached an $11.6 million settlement with Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control over 475 apparent violations of sanctions programs targeting Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics, and global terrorism, according to the OFAC settlement agreement.

The bank admitted that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which requires financial institutions to help the federal government detect and prevent money laundering, PBS NewsHour reported. The bank had already been operating under a December 2024 cease-and-desist order requiring it to address deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering compliance program, according to documents reviewed by ETL Newswire.

Bank of America did not contest the penalties in public remarks. A spokesperson, quoted by CNN, said the company had already dedicated substantial personnel and resources to ongoing remediation and that those costs were in the current expense base.

The fine landed one day before Bank of America reported third-quarter earnings. The bank posted $6.9 billion in profit for the quarter, down roughly 17% from a year earlier, with the $1.2 billion charge weighing on results, CNN reported. Chief Financial Officer Alastair Borthwick told reporters on a Wednesday morning call that the company is committed to addressing all outstanding concerns.

The prior two largest FinCEN penalties on record are a $3.4 billion fine against Binance in 2023 and a $1.3 billion penalty against TD Bank in 2024, CNN reported.

Bessent said the actions send a clear message that size provides no protection from enforcement. The OCC enforcement order noted that Bank of America, as the sixth-largest bank in the world, processes hundreds of trillions of dollars in transactions annually, giving it a high and increasing risk profile for money laundering and terrorist financing.

Sources cited:
- U.S. Treasury / OFAC Settlement Agreement (https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20261013_33)
- PBS NewsHour (AP) (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/economy/u-s-hits-bank-of-america-with-1-2-billion-fine-saying-it-violated-money-laundering-and-sanctions-laws)
- CNN (https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/investing/bank-of-america-billion-dollar-fine)
- Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/14/us-fines-bank-of-america-1-2bn-for-money-laundering-sanctions-violations)
- Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-13/bofa-hit-with-1-2-billion-of-fines-over-money-laundering-lapses)
- The Hill (https://thehill.com/business/6146632-bank-america-treasury-fine/)