Bank of America Fined More Than $1.2 Billion by Treasury

The Treasury Department fined Bank of America more than $1.2 billion on October 13th, 2026 over anti-money-laundering and sanctions violations. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said it assessed a $1.2 billion penalty against Bank of America, N.A. for failing to mitigate and report priority national security risks, including Chinese money laundering networks and illicit finance along the southwest border.

Two other Treasury units acted the same day. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency assessed a $750 million civil money penalty over a deficient and ineffective BSA/AML compliance program, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control announced an $11.6 million settlement over apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs. Fox Business reported that the FinCEN penalty includes credit for the OCC fine, so the three actions combine to approximately $1.21 billion rather than stacking to about $1.96 billion.

What happened

CNBC reported that Bank of America admitted willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain a compliant anti-money-laundering program, failing to conduct required due diligence on foreign correspondent accounts and failing to file suspicious activity reports. The bank failed to timely report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, CNBC said.

Citing Treasury, CNBC reported that more than $1 billion of that unreported suspicious activity involved national security and other high-priority risks, including Chinese money-laundering networks and activity tied to the southwest border. The National reported that the OFAC settlement covers 475 apparent violations spanning Russia, Belarus, Iran, Burma, Somalia, narcotics and global terrorism. Treasury's release said the $11.6 million figure reflects a determination that the violations were non-egregious and largely not voluntarily self-disclosed, with no mitigation credit for remedial measures or cooperation.

Why it moved

Yahoo Finance reported that BAC closed at $53.96 on Tuesday, October 13th, 2026, down 1.14% from Monday's close of $54.58, then slid a further 2.29% to $52.73 in after-hours trading once the penalty became public. The facts on the record do not assign a cause to the regular-session decline, only the sequence around the announcement. Shares of Bank of America Corporation trade under the ticker BAC.

Bank of America said in statements to CNBC, CNN and Fox Business that its third-quarter results will include a non-tax-deductible charge of $1.2 billion, reducing net income by approximately 17 cents per share, and that remediation costs are already reflected in its current expense base.

What the record shows

Treasury said the FinCEN penalty is the third-largest in the department's history and that the $750 million OCC fine is the largest in that agency's history, a point also reported by The National on October 13th, 2026. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the department's release that when a bank of this size fails to meet its anti-money laundering and sanctions obligations the consequences extend far beyond its own walls, and that the actions send a message that even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.

Our own record adds nothing to this one. There is no insider filing activity tied to the announcement in the material gathered for this story, and the only earnings-related figures on the record are the company's own disclosure of the charge and the per-share hit. A claim circulating that the penalty sparked a rally in compliance-technology stocks could not be stood up against any named outlet, so no such stocks are named here.

What to watch

CNBC noted the enforcement action was announced less than a day before Bank of America's quarterly report. The bank was scheduled to release third-quarter 2026 results before the market opened on Wednesday, October 14th, 2026, with a Yahoo Finance and Barchart preview putting analyst consensus at $1.17 in earnings per share against $1.06 a year earlier. Those results had not been released at the time of writing.

Beyond the money, Treasury's release said the settlement requires independent reviews of how effectively the bank's AML program addresses priority risks covering the U.S. southwest border, cartels and potential narcotics trafficking, Iran, and Russia. That obligation outlasts the single-quarter charge.

Reporting from the U.S. Department of the Treasury (release sb0657), FinCEN, CNBC, Fox Business, CNN, Al Jazeera, The National, and Yahoo Finance and Barchart, October 13th, 2026.

Informational only, not investment advice.