30s Summary

TD Bank’s US side has agreed to pay over $3 billion in fines for insufficient monitoring of money laundering activities. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) revealed that two undisclosed crypto companies, linked to more than $1 billion of TD Bank’s transfers, were implicated. Over 90% of the transactions in question were tied to a British cryptocurrency exchange, with 60% of outgoing funds going to a Colombian firm offering cryptocurrency services. TD Bank reportedly handled over $650 million in transfers from an international crypto exchange for the implicated ‘Customer Group C’.

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So, TD Bank recently got into a bit of a pickle, and it might have something to do with two mysterious crypto companies from Colombia and the UK.

What actually happened was that the bank’s US side settled a charge on October 10th, and agreed to pay more than $3 billion in fines. This was because they didn’t keep a close enough eye on money laundering by bad guys. It also means that their plans to grow in the US got a bit of a speed limit.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN, reported on the same day, that these two unknown crypto firms were linked to over $1 billion of TD Bank’s transfers. This is Crazy. The transfers were done by a company called ‘Customer Group C’ which was said to work in the sales finance and real estate industries.

Out of all the transactions handled by ‘Customer Group C’, over 90% of the money came from a cryptocurrency exchange based in the UK. And a whopping 60% of the money that left went straight to a Colombian financial institution offering fancy virtual currency services.

According to FinCEN, this ‘Customer Group C’ handled an average of more than $100 million in wire transfers every month. Most of the money seemed to be going around the globe, facilitating third-party crypto trading in risky areas like Colombia, China, and Middle Eastern countries.

TD Bank is also said to have handled over $650 million in bank transfers from an international crypto exchange for ‘Customer Group C.’ FinCEN has noted that the amount of money transferred was way too high compared to what ‘Customer Group C’ had initially stated in their documents when they joined.

Interestingly, TD Bank apparently played around in the crypto world for a short while. They opened TD Cowen in 2022 to expose customers to the crypto market with 16 different digital assets including Bitcoin and Ether. However, it was closed in June 2023 without giving a reason why.

TD Bank bought Cowen Bank for $1.3 billion in August 2022 and the deal was sealed in March 2023, just before the crypto wing was shut down. This all happened around the time when other crypto companies went under last year, during the banking and regulatory crisis in the US in 2023. So it might all just be a crazy coincidence. But who knows, right?

Source: Cointelegraph