TD Bank pleaded guilty Thursday in a criminal money laundering case and agreed to pay a whopping $3 billion in fines and other penalties to the Department of Justice and federal financial regulators for failing to monitor money laundering by drug cartels.
As part of the deal, TD Bank, whose U.S. unit is the 10th-largest American bank by assets, is accepting limits on its growth, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced Thursday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said a monitor will oversee the bank’s compliance with money-laundering prevention practices for three years as part of a settlement.
Garland said 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.