A majority of the brokers examined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as part of an inquiry into the sale of low-priced stocks were found to have serious compliance deficiencies, the agency said Thursday.
A recent regulatory penalty citing a Brown Brothers Harriman executive made a compliance director at Bank of America wonder about his future personal liability, attendees of a business forum heard Tuesday.
America's oldest private bank will pay $8 million to settle regulatory anti-money laundering violations, the largest such fine imposed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Internet portals that facilitate crowd-sourced fundraising will need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to comply with anti-money laundering rules proposed by the U.S. regulator of broker-dealers, say industry consultants.
Plans by the U.S. securities market regulator to more strictly enforce regulations will result in a jump in anti-money laundering penalties both by the agency and its private sector partner.
As investment firms look toward new markets to turn a profit, the individuals charged with auditing their compliance program should take note. Bad audits remain a common thread of costly regulatory penalties.
U.S. financial institutions are taking a closer look at accounts held for stock brokers managing money on behalf of multiple parties in the wake of governmental warnings and sanctions-related settlements.
The annual number of suspicious activity reports filed by money services businesses fell by 14 percent in 2012 compared with the previous year, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a report Wednesday.
Penny stock fraud and soon-to-be introduced customer due diligence regulations should be foremost on the minds of compliance officers at small securities firms, believes Kenneth Cherrier, senior vice president and chief supervisory officer at Overland, KS-based Waddell & Reed, Inc.
Changes to how and how often securities firms report suspicious activity are helping to clarify the scope of a long-familiar financial crime: microcap fraud.
U.S. law enforcement officials and regulators have queried the nation's financial intelligence unit about securities settlements that use the world's top financial messaging platform, according to the agency's director.
The effect of a planned whistleblower program expected to have an impact on anti-money laundering compliance departments will likely be mitigated by low funding and other issues, say consultants.
The largest nongovernmental regulator of U.S. securities firms has expelled a Westlake Village, CA-based company for failing to implement anti-money laundering controls, the organization said Monday.
The country's largest independent securities regulator fined Scottrade $600,000 Monday for alleged deficiencies in its anti-money laundering program, including the company's over reliance on a manual transaction auditing system.
Penalties issued by the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency for anti-money laundering violations are on course to outnumber similar fines levied by the self-regulatory organization in 2008, according to agency data.
Hedge fund manager Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to bilking investors out of $65 billion and laundering the money as part of a Ponzi scheme that dwarfed similar swindles.
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined a Michigan brokerage firm $225,000 for securities violations and poor anti-money laundering controls, the second such enforcement action against a broker this year.
The Bush administration has added six government agencies, including three financial regulators, to a federal task force charged with fighting mortgage and securities fraud, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
The investigation into a $50 billion securities fraud by a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock market may mean more scrutiny for banks that took him as a client, according to a financial investigator.
Securities are becoming more attractive to money launderers because of the speed of transactions and the large number of high-dollar trades on exchanges with little oversight, a European anti-money laundering watchdog said Tuesday.