TD Bank pleads guilty, will pay $3 billion in fines

TD Bank pleaded guilty Thursday to multiple criminal charges and agreed to pay a whopping $3 billion in fines and other penalties to the Department of Justice and financial regulators for failing to monitor money laundering by drug traffickers and other criminals.

As part of the deal, TD Bank, whose U.S. unit is the 10th-largest American bank by assets, also will have limits to its growth imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The total assets of TD Bank’s two U.S. banking subsidiaries will be barred from exceeding $434 billion under that restriction.

The restrictions are similar to those imposed by the Federal Reserve on Wells Fargo in 2018 over what the Federal Reserve called “widespread consumer abuses” at that bank.

“By making its services convenient for criminals, TD Bank became one,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday.

“Today, TD Bank also became the largest bank in U.S. history to plead guilty to Bank Secrecy Act program failures, and the first U.S. bank in history to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering,” Garland said.

“TD Bank chose profits over compliance with the law — a decision that is now costing the bank billions of dollars in penalties. Let me be clear: Our investigation continues, and no individual involved in TD Bank’s illegal conduct is off limits.”

Garland, speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., said a monitor would oversee the bank’s compliance with anti-money-laundering practices for three years as part of a settlement with the DOJ, which is receiving $1.8 billion in connection with the bank’s guilty plea in federal court in Newark, New Jersey.

The attorney general said that over a six-year period that ended last October, TD Bank admittedly failed to monitor a stunning $18.3 trillion in customer activity, which allowed three money laundering networks to transfer more than $670 million through accounts at the bank.

At least one of those schemes involved five bank employees, Garland said.

“At various times, high-level executives, including the person who became the bank’s chief anti-money-laundering officer, knew there were serious problems with the bank’s anti-money-laundering program, but the bank failed to correct them,” the attorney general said.

Garland read reporters details of electronic messages that showed the awareness and concerns bank employees had about suspicious transactions by one individual, known as David, who personally moved more than $470 million in illicit funds through TD Bank branches in the United States.

“In August 2021, a TD Bank store manager emailed another store manager and remarked,…