Treasury Hits Bank of America With $1.2 Billion Money Laundering Fine

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for allegedly violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws — the third-largest penalty in the department's history. The action against America's second-biggest bank includes a record $750 million payment to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and an $11.6 million settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

By Amara Osei

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did not mince words. "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 in a statement. "Today's actions send a clear message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law."

How did Treasury break down the penalty?

The Treasury Department split the $1.2 billion across its enforcement arms. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, assessed the headline penalty for Bank of America's "failure to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese Money Laundering Networks and illicit finance along the southwest border."

• $750 million goes to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — the largest fine that federal bank regulator has ever imposed.
• $11.6 million settles with the Office of Foreign Assets Control over "apparent violations of numerous sanctions programs, including on Iran, Russia, narcotics, and global terrorism."
• Treasury said Bank of America "admits that it willfully violated" the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act, the law that requires banks to help the government detect and prevent money laundering.

The willful-violation admission matters. Banks in comparable cases have often negotiated settlements without such admissions, and a formal acknowledgment narrows the bank's room to contest the findings later.

What did Bank of America say?

The bank accepted responsibility in its own statement but pointed to remediation work already underway.

"Financial crime compliance is serious, and we are responsible for getting it right," Bank of America said. "We worked with regulators to reach these penalty resolutions stemming from violations cited in the previously reported 2024 (Comptroller of the Currency) Consent Order and FinCEN's investigation."

The bank also pushed back gently on the suggestion of inaction. "We have invested billions of dollars in technology and dedicated thousands of employees to combat financial crime, and our team is far along with and committed to completing the work required to address the issues raised by our regulators," the statement continued.

That framing signals the bank's legal strategy: acknowledge the lapse, emphasize spending already made, and frame the resolution as the closing chapter of a process that began with the 2024 OCC consent order.

Where does this rank among enforcement actions?

Only two Treasury penalties have ever been larger. Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, paid roughly $4 billion in a 2023 settlement. TD Bank, based in Canada, followed with an approximately $3 billion settlement the next year.

Both of those actions landed during the Biden administration's push on anti-money laundering enforcement and its effort to bring the then-emerging virtual currency industry into compliance. The Bank of America penalty shows the enforcement drive has carried across administrations, now targeting a systemically important domestic bank rather than a crypto platform or foreign lender.

The Binance case had personal consequences. Months after the exchange's settlement, founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison over charges that he looked the other way as criminals used his platform to move money connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking and terrorism.

What's the so-what?

The message from Bessent's Treasury is that scale offers no shield — the country's second-largest bank by assets now holds the record for the largest OCC fine ever issued. For compliance chiefs across the banking sector, the takeaway is blunt: willful-violation admissions, record regulator payments and public naming of specific threat vectors, from Chinese money laundering networks to southwest border illicit finance, are now standard features of top-tier enforcement. Expect other large banks to accelerate Bank Secrecy Act remediation programs before FinCEN comes calling.