In December 2023, Senator Elizabeth Warren asked Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan whether crypto companies handling financial transactions should follow the same anti-money-laundering rules as banks.
“Absolutely,” he said. On Oct. 13, Treasury announced more than $1.2 billion in penalties against his bank. FinCEN found that Bank of America admitted to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act and failed to report over $5 billion in suspicious transactions on time.
What regulators found at Bank of America
FinCEN assessed $1.2 billion, including the OCC's $750 million penalty, the largest civil money penalty the OCC has assessed against a bank. OFAC separately announced an $11.6 million settlement covering 475 apparent sanctions violations.
FinCEN says the bank admitted violations in three areas: its AML program, due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts and the filing of suspicious activity reports.
More than $1 billion of the late-reported transactions involved priority illicit-finance and national-security risks, including Chinese money laundering networks and potential trade-based laundering near the southwestern border.
The OCC found deficient transaction monitoring across trillions of dollars in activity, late reports involving billions, insufficient BSA staff expertise, inadequate training, audit failures and weak remediation of a December 2024 cease-and-desist order.
Treasury said the bank relied too heavily on law-enforcement inquiries, referrals from other institutions, and external interventions to identify suspicious activity, with its internal monitoring systems playing a smaller role.
Comptroller Jonathan Gould described the second-largest US bank as processing hundreds of trillions of dollars annually, carrying a high and increasing illicit-finance risk profile and showing “widespread breakdowns” since the 2024 order.
The findings span several years, including the period since Moynihan's Senate testimony. The $5 billion measures suspicious transactions reported late, rather than an established total of laundered money.
The banking lobby's crypto push
At the Dec. 6, 2023 Senate Banking Committee hearing, Warren first asked whether Bank of America had systems to detect, report, and stop potential terrorist-financing activity, and Moynihan answered yes.
Warren then asked about crypto companies, and he replied “Absolutely,” endorsing equivalent AML obligations for crypto firms that handle financial transactions.
Moynihan sits on the Bank Policy Institute board and has served as its chair, according to Bank of America's investor materials.
In August 2026, BPI published a policy paper titled “Same Risks, Same Safeguards.” It argues that digital asset rules leave illicit-finance gaps in secondary markets, including exchanges, custodians, and DeFi firms, with a particular focus on stablecoin activity.
BPI also endorsed 2023 efforts to extend Bank Secrecy Act requirements across the digital asset industry.
Crypto uses the case
Figure executive Mike Cagney has pointed to the Bank of America action while arguing that the crypto industry handles KYC better than US banks.
KYC covers customer onboarding, and the Bank of America findings concern ongoing transaction monitoring, suspicious-activity reporting, and correspondent due diligence, which makes the comparison narrower than the rhetoric around it.
Crypto's record adds context, with Binance pleading guilty in 2023 to Bank Secrecy Act conspiracy, failure to register as a money transmitter, and sanctions violations. It agreed to pay $4.3 billion and accepted an independent monitor.
A FinCEN analysis found that Bank Secrecy Act reports filed from September 2023 through December 2025 identified about $12.7 billion in suspected digital asset investment scam-related financial activity.
Where the Bank of America debate goes from here
One possible policy response is consistent AML enforcement across banks and crypto firms.
Crypto firms with auditable on-chain monitoring, wallet screening, and automated controls would then argue they can meet legacy-bank standards, and the debate would turn to which systems produce better, faster financial intelligence.
If banking groups and lawmakers read the case as proof that AML surveillance needs strengthening everywhere, both sectors face heavier compliance burdens. Exchanges, custodians and stablecoin intermediaries could face broader Bank Secrecy Act coverage, and DeFi, wallets and stablecoin secondary markets would become the main policy battleground.
Moynihan told the Senate that crypto firms should meet bank standards. The Oct. 13 findings turn that standard into a test for banks and crypto firms alike: enforcement of the rules as written.
