Federal prosecution of a North Carolina bank for missing a Ponzi scheme could signal that banks will no longer be shielded from criminal liability for failing to detect fraud, say analysts. On Wednesday, the U.S. Justice Department said it had ordered Asheville-based CommunityONE Bank N.A. to replace its anti-money laundering (AML) compliance directors and pay $400,000 as part of a deferred prosecution agreement for failing to detect a $35 million Ponzi scheme primarily run through a single account. Between April 2007 and December 2009, bank customer Keith Franklin Simmons received the funds via wire transfers to his CommunityONE Bank account...
Several domestic and international banks are retraining investigators tasked with identifying fraud and money laundering to better uncover Ponzi schemes, say compliance officers and consultants.
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