Western Union Fined $586 Mln for Money Laundering, Fraudulent Transfers
Remittance giant Western Union has been fined $586 mln after admitting to money laundering and supporting fraudulent wire transfers. The penalty of $586 mln will be used as a refund for the victims of the crimes. Negligence. The Department says Western Union's negligence led to malpractices, and that they could have prevented the significant loss to US consumers if due diligence was upheld. Edith Ramirez, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, noted that: “Western Union owes a responsibility to American consumers to guard against fraud, but instead the company looked the other way, and its....
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Money transfer exchange, Western Union, recently announced a $184 million settlement with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) for violating the Bank Secrecy Act’s anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. Specifically, FinCEN determined that Western Union failed to (1) implement and maintain effective AML compliance oversight of certain agents and sub-agents; and, (2) failed to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) in a timely manner. There are several takeaways from the experience of this legacy organization for money transfers that their counterparts in the Bitcoin space....