BofA's Merrill Lynch to Pay SEC $7.5 Million Over Suspicious-Activity Reporting Lapse
- The SEC fined Bank of America's Merrill Lynch unit $7.5 million for failing to file thousands of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) between April 2020 and September 2024.
- Regulators found Merrill's transaction-monitoring software had a known flaw — it only investigated alerts with risk scores of 20 or higher, creating blind spots for activity that should have been flagged.
- Merrill settled without admitting or denying the findings, the latest in a string of anti-money-laundering penalties hitting major US banks.