Legal issues and news

Executives from JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are expected to get grilled in Congress this summer over victims of Zelle scams who don't get reimbursed. A Senate panel has spent much of the last year examining fraud on the bank-owned payments network.

It is increasingly clear that joining a risk consortium is the best defense banks have against fraudsters who are increasingly powered by artificial intelligence.

The payday loan industry is looking to extend its years-long legal fight with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It's planning to ask a federal appeals court to revisit a ruling that upheld a proposed limit on how often payday lenders can try to pull money from their customers' accounts.

Executives at the Canadian bank, which recently took a major provision for potential fines, say they're working to shore up anti-money laundering controls. At the same time, they're preparing employees and investors for an expensive slog as they work to satisfy U.S. officials.

The Supreme Court issued an opinion Thursday morning that was unequivocal in its view that Congress is constitutionally empowered to fund agencies with open-ended and indirect funding mechanisms, overruling a 5th Circuit opinion from 2022 that found that executive branches must be subject to direct Congressional appropriations.

The small business lender's bankrupt shell has agreed to pay up to $120 million in connection with allegations that its verification processes for Paycheck Protection Program loan applications were faulty. The government argued that Kabbage reaped larger fees by enabling fraudulently inflated loans.

A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's credit card late fee rule, pausing it from being implemented days before it was meant to go live.

After a California woman spent more than a decade obtaining reparations for Nazi plundering of her family's belongings, the money disappeared from her bank account. Her saga highlights a gap in fraud cases between what consumers expect from their banks and what those banks are in a position to deliver.

A veteran Canadian bank analyst says Toronto-Dominion Bank's role in an alleged money-laundering scheme has made the "worst-case scenario" more likely — a huge fine for the lender and years of restrictions on its U.S. growth.

Gary Farro's testimony focused on both the banking activity of Michael Cohen, a former Trump attorney who paid $130,000 to an adult film actress in 2016, and First Republic Bank's due diligence work.

Toronto-Dominion failed to submit suspicious-transaction reports in cases where it was reasonable to suspect the transfers were tied to money laundering or terrorist financing, along with other violations, according to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering new rules covering the collection and sale of some consumer data. If it's not careful, the agency could be inadvertently assisting identity thieves.

A 50% growth in losses from check fraud last year is pushing bankers in Illinois to ask regulators for a joint supervisory guidance and tougher enforcement of large banks' "know your customer" compliance.

Toronto-Dominion Bank has taken an initial provision of $450 million in connection with U.S. investigations into its anti-money-laundering practices and said it expects additional penalties to come.

In this month's roundup of top tech news: the impact of Synapse's bankruptcy on the banking-as-a-service industry, large language models best suited for banks, Discover deploys generative artificial intelligence in its contact center and more.

While home lenders are seeing a decrease in issues coming through mobile channels, phone fraud spiked last year, accounting for 28% of losses, a new report found.

The ABA is testing an information-exchange network to allow banks to share their fraud data with each other. Companies including Baselayer are also building solutions.

Many legal experts think the Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a case challenging its funding. Such a ruling would unleash a flurry of litigation that has been on hold pending the outcome of the constitutional challenge.

Banks reported nearly $27 billion had been tied up in scams or theft against elderly people in a recent 12-month period, according to a report from the U.S. Treasury.

With financial crime surging worldwide, it is critical that the public and private sectors align on a shared vision to collectively focus on combating bad actors and to eliminate their ability to launder the proceeds of criminal activity.