TD Bank Pleads Guilty and Pays $3 Billion to Settle Money-Laundering Case

TD Bank agreed to pay about $3 billion in fines to U.S. authorities and pleaded guilty on Thursday to money-laundering-related charges in a case brought by federal prosecutors, who said the Canadian bank made it “convenient” for criminals to open accounts, transfer funds and even deposit seven-figure sums of cash at its branches.

The combined penalties are the largest ever imposed by U.S. authorities on a bank for violating anti-money-laundering laws, and include an “asset cap” that prevents TD Bank from growing any bigger than its current size.

A pair of federal charging documents lay out how, for more than a decade, TD Bank employees took bribes and overlooked flagrant activity by criminal customers from Colombia and elsewhere.

In one example cited by the authorities, a Queens man who had earlier pleaded guilty to several crimes provided bank workers with more than $57,000 in gift cards in return for permitting the laundering of more than $470 million.

Such behavior was somewhat of an open secret inside the bank, prosecutors said. “How is that not money laundering?” one branch employee asked another after a customer was permitted to buy more than $1 million in bank checks with cash.

“Oh, it 100 percent is,” the second employee responded, according to the charging documents.

In another instance, a branch manager emailed a colleague, “You guys really need to shut this down LOL.” They didn’t.