On October 9, 2025, FINRA’s Department of Enforcement finalized a letter of acceptance, waiver, and consent (AWC) to settle with a Miami-based broker-dealer for violations of FINRA Rules 3310(a) and 2010 regarding said firm’s anti-money laundering (AML) program being deficient with respect to its review of transactions and wire activity by certain foreign individuals or entities and with respect to its review of certain wire activity by firm customers custodied with the firm’s Swiss bank affiliate. The $650,000 fine for this AWC is the second major penalty for AML deficiencies the firm has faced in recent years; in May 2018, it was fined $800,000 for similar violations.
This settlement covered the period from May 2018 to August 2022. The AWC alleged these primary areas where the Firm’s AML program failed to function as required:
- The firm failed to monitor almost a thousand wire transfers totaling $305 million for suspicious activity. This happened because of data transmission delays from the firm’s banking affiliates. Relatedly, the firm also failed to perform timely validation to ensure its monitoring tool was capturing all wire transfers.
- An alert designed to flag customer wire transfers of $100,000 or more sent to or received from high-risk jurisdictions failed to operate correctly, preventing the alert from triggering for wire transfers that totaled approximately $30 million.
- The firm failed to complete certain periodic account reviews that were a component of its AML program. These reviews were required for detecting unusual activity that could warrant the necessity of a suspicious activity report filing and for evaluating customer risk ratings, which set the parameters for the firm’s automated AML monitoring.
- The firm neglected to perform AML-related investigations when other financial institutions rejected wire transfers transmitted by its customers for compliance reasons, inclusive of customers that the firm had designated as high-risk.
The firm consented to these findings without admitting wrongdoing in connection with the claims, and the AWC stated that the firm had remediated certain practices related to the alleged FINRA rule violations. In terms of takeaways, FINRA Enforcement will continue to be vigilant in investigating its member broker-dealer firms for compliance with their AML obligations. The other takeaway is that, even though this firm is a recidivist, the fine for this AWC was $150,000 less than the prior fine. This is likely due to and a credit to the remedial efforts referenced in the AWC being significant — but also perhaps due to the FINRA Department of Enforcement being more reasonable in today’s current climate than it has been in recent years.
