Warren calls Treasury Department fine of Bank of America a ‘slap-on-the-wrist’

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) on Wednesday blasted the Treasury Department’s $1.2 billion fine of Bank of America as “a slap-on-the-wrist fine.”

Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement that Bank of America “failed to implement an effective anti-money laundering program for years.”

In announcing the penalty, the Treasury Department said the country’s second-largest bank violated anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.

The financial institution failed to “mitigate and report priority national security risks” to regulators, the department said in the press release . Those risks included “suspicious transactions” indicative of activity by Chinese money laundering networks and southwest border cartels, the department noted.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the penalty — the third-largest in his department’s history — showed that “even the biggest financial institutions are not above the law.”

But Warren cast the penalty in a different light, noting the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) warned Bank of America in 2024 to address its “deficient” money-laundering compliance program.

“The Biden Administration failed to hold Bank of America accountable in 2024, and now, the Trump Administration is letting Bank of America off the hook with a slap-on-the-wrist fine that represents a small fraction of the $30 billion in profits the bank made last year alone,” the Massachusetts Democrat added.

“Real accountability would mean imposing an asset cap and restrictions on shareholder dividends and stock buybacks and conducting a criminal investigation into the apparent violation of our anti-money laundering laws,” she continued, before calling on Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan to testify to Congress.

A spokesperson for Bank of America said the company “worked with regulators” to reach the penalty resolutions after the OCC issued its 2024 order and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network conducted its probe.

“We will continue to support federal and local law enforcement across thousands of investigations and report hundreds of thousands of suspicious activity reports each year,” the spokesperson added.

The institution on Wednesday reported $6.9 billion in net income during the third quarter, a total that accounted for the Treasury Department’s $1.2 billion penalty.

Bank of America also reported $30 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 3 percent from the third quarter of 2025 but down 5 percent from the second quarter of this year.

The bank’s stock rebounded Wednesday, closing at $51.39 per share after sinking below its opening mark of $49.83 during trading. The company’s stock was up Thursday, trading at above $51.40 per share as of the late morning.

Warren is in line to chair the Senate Banking panel if Democrats win control of the upper chamber in the midterms, now less than three weeks away.

The progressive senator added Wednesday that large banks “should be subject to structural punishments” and executives “should be held personally accountable when they break the law.”