Warren urges DOJ probe of Bank of America money laundering

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into Bank of America and its executives after the banking giant admitted it willfully violated federal anti-money-laundering laws, according to a letter first shared with CNBC.

The Massachusetts Democrat and ranking member of the Senate banking committee called the more than $1.2 billion in penalties imposed on the bank Oct. 13 a “slap on the wrist” and urged Attorney General Todd Blanche to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

“The documented violations by Bank of America allowed illicit actors to move billions through the U.S. financial system,” Warren wrote.

She gave the DOJ until Nov. 12 to say whether it has already investigated the conduct and, if not, whether it plans to do so.

Bank of America and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The letter comes just over two weeks after Treasury regulators accused the nation’s second-largest bank of years of serious compliance failures in one of the largest anti-money-laundering enforcement actions in department history.

As part of its settlement with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Bank of America admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain an adequate anti-money-laundering program and properly report suspicious activity.

Regulators said the bank failed to report in a timely manner more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions. More than $1 billion involved national-security and other high-priority risks, including activity indicative of Chinese money-laundering networks and transactions tied to the southwest border of the U.S.

Treasury said Bank of America at times “prioritized its revenues” over compliance and relied heavily on law enforcement inquiries and referrals from other financial institutions to identify suspicious activity instead of its own systems.

Regulators imposed more than $1.2 billion in penalties, including a record $750 million fine from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The actions did not include criminal charges against the bank or its executives.

The bank said after the actions were announced that it had invested billions of dollars in compliance and was “far along” in addressing the problems.

Warren argues the civil penalties are insufficient.

“Civil fines have become the cost of doing business on Wall Street,” she wrote, pointing to federal law that allows criminal as well as civil penalties for willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.

Bank of America was already operating under a 2024 cease-and-desist order over deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering controls. Regulators said this month that the bank had not made sufficient progress addressing some of those problems.