TD Bank fined $3 billion for failing to monitor money laundering from fentanyl, terrorism and human trafficking

Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank pleaded guilty Thursday for its failure to regulate money laundering by drug cartels selling lethal fentanyl to Americans. Admitting its guilt in the criminal case brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) means the transnational financial institution has to pay $3 billion in fines and other penalties to the DOJ.

TD, which is now the tenth largest American bank after expanding from Canada, has also accepted parameters on how large it can grow, CNBC reported. The total assets that TD can hold as a US bank will be no more than $434 billion.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the bank will have to be subject to monitoring over the next three years to ensure the bank is following strict anti-money-laundering protocol. Garland revealed that over six years, TD Bank ignored $18.3 trillion in customer transactions, enabling three money laundering networks to use the bank to facilitate the flow of $670 million in money laundering through TD bank accounts. TD bank employees were personally involved in at least one of the money laundering operations.

“At various times, high-level executives, including the person who became the bank’s chief anti-money laundering officer, knew there were serious problems with the bank’s anti-money laundering program, but the bank failed to correct them,” Garland told a news conference.

Garland said the DOJ isn’t finished yet and will continue to prosecute others in the case. When asked if those others were TD Bank executives, Garland said, “My general response to these kind of questions is, we don’t comment on ongoing investigations, but I was indicating that we would expect future cases against individuals.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in May of DOJ actions toward the bank, investigating how organized crime in China was using TD to launder money extracted from fentanyl sales in the US. The bank will also have to pay $1.3 billion to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) – the largest such fine ever levied on a financial institution in the United States. President Joe Biden, perhaps reflecting upon his own four years in the White House, recently stated that “for years too little has been done” about combatting fentanyl distribution and addiction in the US.

“The vast majority of financial institutions have partnered with FinCEN to protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. “TD Bank did the opposite.”

“From fentanyl and narcotics trafficking, to terrorist financing and human trafficking, TD Bank’s chronic failures provided fertile ground for a host of illicit activity to penetrate our financial system,” Adeyemo said.

TD Bank is facing the same kind of restrictions on its growth as those experienced by Wells Fargo when it was found guilty of fomenting “widespread consumer abuses,” according to the Federal Reserve Board, CNBC noted.

The Fed also fined TD more than $124 million for violating anti-money laundering laws and said the bank did not “conduct adequate risk management and oversight of its retail banking operations in the United States, resulting in a U.S. subsidiary being used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds.”

In a statement, TD Bank Group CEO Bharat Masrani said, “We have taken full responsibility for the failures of our U.S. AML program and are making the investments, changes and enhancements required to deliver on our commitments.”

“This is a difficult chapter in our Bank’s history. These failures took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders,” Masrani said.

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