The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has imposed a $750 million civil money penalty on Bank of America, the largest in the agency’s history. The penalty, announced October 13, punishes deficient anti-money-laundering controls. It is paid to the U.S. Treasury, and the OCC’s announcement describes no payments to the bank’s customers.
Where the $750 million goes
The OCC release says the penalty is against Bank of America, N.A., for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and its regulations, including the rules requiring a working anti-money-laundering program and timely reports of suspicious activity. The money goes to the Treasury.
Two rules are named. Section 21.21 of the OCC’s regulations requires a bank to run a working Bank Secrecy Act compliance program. Section 21.11 governs the suspicious activity reports banks must file. The OCC says Bank of America violated both, and the penalty rests on those violations.
The release describes no refund, restitution or claim process. An account holder has nothing to file and no check to expect from this action. It is a penalty against the bank for how it monitored its own business, not a settlement of customer complaints.
What changed this year: Social Security and Medicare change every year, and nobody sends you a memo. The Retirement Money Brief breaks down what changed and what to do. Bonus when you subscribe: our Bank, Debt & Protected-Benefit Checkup.
Get the Brief and the bank checkup →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
The penalty is part of a bigger package. The OCC says its action is coordinated with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which is assessing a $1.2 billion fine. That fine credits the OCC’s $750 million, so the combined total is $1.2 billion, not $1.95 billion.
The Associated Press reported that the Treasury Department also settled with the bank for $11.6 million over apparent violations of sanctions programs, including those involving Iran and Russia. That is a separate settlement from the OCC and FinCEN penalties.
What the OCC found
The OCC says Bank of America’s transaction monitoring system was deficient. As a result, the bank failed to properly monitor trillions of dollars in transactions. A monitoring system is the software and review process that flags unusual transactions for human investigators.
Banks file suspicious activity reports, or SARs, to tell the government about transactions that look like crime. The OCC says Bank of America filed many of them late, involving billions of dollars, and that many had signs of money laundering.
The agency says the bank knew for years that it was not escalating potentially suspicious activity to investigators and did not fix the problem. It also found that the officer in charge of Bank Secrecy Act compliance and that officer’s staff lacked sufficient skills, and that key personnel lacked training, leading to inaccurate and late reports. The bank’s internal audit function missed long-standing concerns that examiners later found, according to the OCC.
A 2024 order that did not finish the job
Bank of America has been under a December 2024 cease-and-desist order requiring it to fix its anti-money-laundering program. The OCC says that more than a year after that order, the bank still had not escalated potentially suspicious activity. It also processed potential trade-based money laundering transactions because of a systemic monitoring gap.
Comptroller Jonathan Gould said the bank’s response to its deficiencies “is unacceptable.” He added that banks without effective anti-money-laundering programs “can expect swift and significant action from the OCC.” The 2024 order remains in force alongside the new penalty.
Treasury said the bank admits it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act, according to the AP. Treasury says the bank failed to mitigate and report Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border. Bank of America said it worked with regulators and has invested billions in fighting financial crime.
What a bank penalty means for people who bank there
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the actions “send a clear message” that major financial institutions are not above the law, the AP reported. The AP also reported that the $1.2 billion FinCEN fine is the third-largest in Treasury history, behind Binance at about $4 billion in 2023 and TD Bank at about $3 billion in 2024.
A penalty paid to the Treasury does not reach customers. Nothing in the release changes account fees, services or protections. Money from bank cases reaches consumers a different way, through a court-approved class settlement with a claim period, a notice and a deadline.
The OCC took a similar approach a week earlier. On October 8 it announced a $350 million penalty against American Express National Bank, less than half the Bank of America amount and also payable to the Treasury, along with a cease-and-desist order. Neither agency announcement mentions payments to customers of either bank.
Anyone who sees a Bank of America settlement offer in the mail or online after this news should treat it with care. The OCC action has no claim form, and no deadline for customers. A real consumer settlement would come with its own notice, administrator and court case number.
If a bank settlement does open, who keeps track of the dates?
This penalty pays no one, but bank cases sometimes produce separate settlements with claim windows. The deadline, the proof requirement and the payment date are usually in different parts of the notice, and missing one can cost the claim.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice and a claim log and payment tracker. It also holds the scam-proof rules and a source vault of 12 official places money sits, so a notice can be checked before any form is filled out.
Keep bank-case claim dates in this settlement claim log and payment tracker →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Ways Retirees Are Tapping a Record $14.9 Trillion in Home Equity
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
