News

A community bank operating from a single branch in Southern California agreed to pay $7 million to the U.S. financial intelligence unit for willfully and knowingly violating the Bank Secrecy Act while still under the terms of previous enforcement actions. In concurrent civil monetary penalties, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said Monday that Merchants Bank of California failed to apply adequate scrutiny to billions of dollars of correspondent transactions and remittances over a 4-year period, including $192 million of suspicious transfers from August to October 2014. Some of the transactions were...