Regulatory Alerts2020-03-04 | 2020-01Added
Assessment of Civil Money Penalty Against Michael LaFontaine
FinCEN assesses a civil money penalty of $450,000 against Michael LaFontaine for his role in U.S. Bank's willful violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, specifically the failure to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program and the failure to timely file thousands of Suspicious Activity Reports. The penalty addresses LaFontaine's failure to take sufficient steps to ensure the bank's compliance division was appropriately staffed and his participation in maintaining numerical caps on transaction monitoring alerts that suppressed the investigation of suspicious activity. As part of the consent agreement, LaFontaine admits to the violations and agrees to an undertaking prohibiting him from performing a compliance management function for any financial institution for six years following his departure from the bank in June 2014.