Bank of America admitted willful Bank Secrecy Act violations in a $1.21 billion Treasury action, the third-largest in the department’s history.

Bank of America was slapped with over $1.21 billion in U.S. penalties after regulators found it failed to report over $5 billion in suspicious transactions, the Treasury Department announced on Oct. 13, 2026. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act, the foundation of US anti-money laundering law.

At a glance

What: Treasury’s FinCEN assessed $1.2 billion and OFAC added an $11.6 million sanctions settlement. The OCC’s $750 million penalty is credited against FinCEN’s figure, per The Digital Banker.

When: Announced Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026.

Who: Bank of America, FinCEN, OFAC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

What did Bank of America get wrong?

The bank failed to retain a compliant anti-money laundering program, failed to conduct correspondent-account due diligence on foreign banks and failed to file suspicious activity reports on time, Treasury said. Over $1 billion of unreported transactions impacted national security and other priority areas, including Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.

The OCC also has a list. Monitoring activity of trillions of dollars in transactions went unnoticed. The bank’s BSA officer and staff were not adequately trained and internal audits missed long-standing problems. Treasury said the bank still failed to escalate suspicious activity several months after their December 2024 cease-and-desist order.

How big is the penalty?

It is the third-largest in Treasury’s history, the Associated Press reported, behind a roughly $4 billion Binance settlement in 2023 and a roughly $3 billion TD Bank settlement the following year. The OCC’s $750 million is the largest civil penalty that agency has ever imposed.

A $1.2 billion charge trimmed third-quarter results by $0.17 a share, FinanceFeeds reported and the stock dropped more than 8% at one point.

What are Treasury and the bank saying?

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it a warning. Today’s actions say that “even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law,” he said in a statement carried by Fortune.

“Financial crime compliance is serious and we are responsible for getting it right,” the bank said in a statement. It added that it has invested billions into technology and thousands of employees into the problem and that remediation is well underway.

What happens next?

The consent terms require a third-party look back to find and report on suspicious transactions the bank missed. Independent reviewers must also look into its monitoring, customer due diligence and data governance. OFAC secured separate compliance commitments. No further enforcement has been reported; anything wider is speculation until regulators say more.

More details

The sanctions part: OFAC’s $11.6 million settlement covers 475 apparent violations to programs targeting Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics trafficking and global terrorism. OFAC called them non-egregious and mostly not voluntarily self-disclosed.

Root issues: Regulators said the bank prioritized revenue, limited compliance resources and relied too highly upon outside inquiries from law enforcement, Crowdfund Insider reported.

Time frame: Crowdfund Insider puts the violations between 2018 and July 2025. Treasury’s release gives no formal date range.

Why “$1.2 billion” and “$1.21 billion” both appear: The larger figure includes OFAC’s $11.6 million to FinCEN’s $1.2 billion. Treasury’s release does not specify the OCC credit; other outlets do.

Bank of America now owes one of the largest bills in Treasury’s enforcement history, on top of a multi-year cleanup under outside review. The facts that matter are settled: an admission of willful Bank Secrecy Act violations, over $5 billion in unreported suspicious activity and a December 2024 order that did not remediate the problem in time.

Business Fortune reports, what the penalty does to the bank’s compliance record is still unknown.

Sources

U.S. Treasury · AP via PBS NewsHour · Fortune · The Digital Banker · Compliance Week · Crowdfund Insider · FinanceFeeds