On January 15, 2021, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) announced that Capital One, National Association (“CONA”) had been fined $390,000,000 for “willful” and “negligent” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) and its anti-money laundering implementing regulations. CONA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capital One Financial Corporation (“COFC”). As part of the agreement, CONA will pay $290,000,000 to the U.S. Department of Treasury (it previously paid $100,000,000 to The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) in 2018 for similar violations).
The fine, which was one of the larger fines in FinCEN’s history, was imposed even though CONA had taken substantial remedial measures including enhancing its anti-money laundering (“AML”) budget, voluntarily commencing an extensive lookback into years of potentially suspicious transactions, and voluntarily exiting the cash checking business, which was the source of its violations.
From 2008 to 2014, CONA owned and operated the Cash Checking Group (“CCG”) which was a check cashing service for small businesses in the New York- and New Jersey-area. According to FinCEN, during this time, CONA and CCG’s BSA violations were “significant” and “willful.”