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SEC Hits Online Broker E-Trade with $1 Million AML Penalty
By Brian Monroe
printThe securities industry's chief regulator fined online trading firm E-Trade $1 million for failing to verify the identity of tens of thousands of customers, a key tenet of federal anti-money laundering regulations. Two divisions of New York-based E-Trade failed to accurately document and determine the identities of more than 65,000 of their secondary accountholders in newly opened joint accounts over a 20-month period, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) stated in an administrative order. The violations occurred between October 2003 and June 2005, the commission said. The penalty issued Wednesday against the company, which has $174 billion in customer assets, is...
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