InfoBytes Blog
FinCEN Settles with Card Club Gaming Establishment for BSA Violations
On December 17, FinCEN announced a $650,000 settlement with a “card club” gaming establishment in California for willfully violating the program and reporting requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). The gaming establishment allegedly trained its staff using misleading and inaccurate AML policy, which either failed to provide instructions at all, or provided incorrect instructions regarding the establishment’s obligations and reporting requirements under the BSA. As an example, the establishment “encouraged employees to provide notice to patrons if they were about to conduct a cash transaction that would put them over the $10,000 threshold for the filing of a Currency Transaction Report, thereby possibly encouraging structured transactions.” In addition, since the establishment’s policy did not contain instructions regarding when an employee should file a Suspicious Activity Report (“SAR”), it failed to file SARs in 2009 and 2010. Card clubs are gaming facilities that generally host only games involving cards; like casinos, card clubs are defined as financial institutions under the BSA, rendering them subject to FinCEN’s rules and regulatory authority.