Bank of America Criminal Probe: Warren Presses DOJ

Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked the Department of Justice on October 29 to open a Bank of America criminal probe, and to say by November 12 whether it has done so, after a $1.21 billion Treasury fine over anti-money laundering (AML) failures.

The Massachusetts Democrat wrote to Attorney General Todd Blanche two weeks after the bank resolved Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and sanctions cases with three Treasury bodies. The bank admitted to willfully violating the BSA, the standard that federal law ties to criminal penalties. For compliance teams, the question is whether the Bank of America AML fine is the end of the matter or a first step toward the prosecutions and monitorships that followed deferred prosecution agreements and guilty pleas at other large banks.

Warren seeks a Bank of America criminal probe

Warren called the Bank of America AML fine “a slap on the wrist.” She asked the DOJ two things: whether it has criminally investigated or will investigate the failures, and whether it will coordinate with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on the bank’s compliance with the October 13 consent order.

“conduct a full criminal investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecute the bank and its executives.” Elizabeth Warren, US Senator, D-Massachusetts

Her letter also argues that “Civil fines have become the cost of doing business on Wall Street.” It notes that the bank was already under a December 2024 cease-and-desist order from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

A DOJ spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter but said the department does not confirm or deny the existence of ongoing investigations. The Treasury announcement describes no DOJ resolution, and no deferred prosecution agreement or plea has been announced.

How the $1.21 billion penalty breaks down

Three Treasury bodies acted on October 13, according to the Treasury announcement. The Federal Reserve was not among them, despite earlier expectations.

FinCEN assessed $1.2 billion for failing to mitigate and report priority national security risks.
The OCC imposed a $750 million civil money penalty for a deficient BSA and AML compliance program, the largest in its history.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) settled 475 apparent sanctions violations for $11.6 million.

The $1.21 billion Bank of America AML fine equals FinCEN’s $1.2 billion plus OFAC’s $11.6 million. The OCC’s $750 million is counted within the FinCEN figure, not added to it. Treasury said the combined actions include the third-largest penalty in its history.

The bank recorded a $1.2 billion non-tax-deductible charge for the penalties in the third quarter of 2026, according to its Form 10-Q. The filing describes consent orders with the OCC and FinCEN and a settlement agreement with OFAC.

What regulators said went wrong in the AML program

FinCEN found that the bank failed to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, over $1 billion of which involved national security or other priority risks. They included activity tied to Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border. The release does not state a violation period, but it ties the failures to the December 2024 order and says deficiencies persisted more than a year after it.

The deficiencies read as a list of control failures:

The bank did not maintain an AML program that met BSA requirements, did not conduct required due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts, and did not file suspicious activity reports on time.
It relied heavily on law enforcement inquiries and referrals from other institutions rather than its own monitoring, and suspicious activity sat uninvestigated for long periods.
Its transaction monitoring system failed to properly monitor trillions of dollars in transactions.
Key BSA staff lacked adequate training and expertise, and the BSA audit function missed longstanding problems.
Customer due diligence did not account for customers’ heavy reliance on payments from unknown third parties, despite red flags including possible narcotics proceeds and trade-based money laundering.

The audit finding bears on the three lines of defence: the third line did not catch what the first two missed. More than a year after the 2024 order, the bank still failed to escalate suspicious activity and processed potential trade-based money laundering because of a monitoring gap, according to Treasury.

OFAC’s findings covered correspondent payments routed through blocked banks, weak alert calibration that let designated individuals transact, delayed watchlist updates and mishandled accounts tied to blocked persons. The violations span programs covering Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics and global terrorism. OFAC deemed them non-egregious and largely not voluntarily self-disclosed.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the announcement: “Financial institutions are on the front lines of protecting our economic and national security.”

Bank of America criminal probe versus the TD Bank precedent

The comparison Warren’s letter invites is the DOJ’s own position on compliance programs and its record at other banks. TD Bank pleaded guilty on October 10, 2024 to conspiracy to violate the BSA and commit money laundering, in a resolution worth about $3.09 billion across agencies. Prosecutors said three money laundering networks moved more than $670 million through its accounts over six years.

That package included a DOJ penalty of $1.8 billion, an OCC cap limiting TD’s assets to the $434 billion it reported on September 30, 2024, and an independent monitorship. The DOJ said the bank’s AML deficiencies were long-term, pervasive and systemic from January 2014 to October 2023.

Bank of America’s package, so far, is civil. It carries an admission of willfulness, a third-party lookback to find and report suspicious transactions that went undetected, and independent reviews. Those cover suspicious activity monitoring, customer due diligence, foreign correspondent due diligence and data governance, with priority on the southwest border, cartels and narcotics trafficking, Iran and Russia.

Warren also pointed to other recent cases. American Express agreed this month to pay $350 million to the OCC and the Federal Reserve over AML program failures. SEB and its New York branch agreed to pay $33 million to resolve a New York Department of Financial Services AML investigation.

What a Bank of America criminal probe would mean for banks

The OCC’s 2024 action was a consent order with no monetary penalty. The bank’s earlier 2026 filing said it was discussing a resolution of that order with the OCC that might include penalties. The October 13 actions are that resolution, and they show how a first order without a fine can become a record Bank of America AML penalty when remediation falls short.

For banks, the signal is about remediation evidence. Treasury cited training, monitoring coverage, audit quality and data governance, which are the areas where firms now build connected AML data and monitoring. Boards that receive remediation reports on open consent orders will be asked what independent testing backs them.

Whether the DOJ will act is not known. The department has not said that it is investigating, and a Bank of America criminal probe would be a separate step from the Treasury cases. Warren’s deadline for a reply is November 12, and FinCEN’s consent order requires the independent lookback to proceed.