US Treasury Fines Bank of America $1.2 Billion Over Anti-Money Laundering Failures

The US Treasury Department imposed more than $1.21 billion in penalties on Bank of America on Tuesday for violations of anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a $1.2 billion fine, the third-largest in Treasury history. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency levied a $750 million civil penalty, the largest it has ever imposed; that amount is credited against the FinCEN total. The Office of Foreign Assets Control added an $11.6 million settlement for 475 apparent sanctions violations.

Bank of America admitted that it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act. From 2018 through 2025 the bank failed to maintain an adequate AML program, did not conduct required due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts, and did not file timely suspicious-activity reports. As a result it missed more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions. More than $1 billion of that activity carried national-security or other priority illicit-finance risks, including transactions linked to Chinese money-laundering networks, fraud, and potential trade-based laundering with a substantial connection to the US-Mexico border.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the actions show that even the largest institutions are not above the law. Regulators stated that the bank had prioritized revenue and relied on external tips from law enforcement and other banks rather than building its own detection systems. A consent order requires Bank of America to hire an independent third party to review past transactions, identify activity that should have been reported, and file the missing SARs with FinCEN.

The bank said its third-quarter results will include a non-tax-deductible charge of $1.2 billion, reducing net income by about 17 cents per share. It noted that remediation work is already under way and that associated costs sit in the current expense base. The penalty arrives the day before the bank reports quarterly earnings.

OFAC's settlement covers payments the bank processed to sanctioned parties connected with Iran, Russia, Belarus, Burma, Somalia, narcotics traffickers, and global terrorism programs. The total value of those payments was roughly $14 million. No criminal charges have been announced. The case stands as a pure civil resolution focused on compliance failures rather than individual misconduct.

The size of the fine places it just behind the $3.4 billion Binance penalty in 2023 and the $1.3 billion TD Bank case in 2024. Both of those actions included Justice Department involvement; this one does not. For Bank of America the immediate consequence is the charge against earnings and the multi-year review of historical transactions now required by the consent order.