InfoBytes Blog
SEC Charges Brokerage Firm with AML Failures
On June 1, the SEC announced that a Wall Street-based brokerage firm agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty to settle charges that it failed to sufficiently evaluate or monitor customers’ trading for suspicious activity and to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) in an alleged willful violation of Section 17(a) of the Exchange Act and Rule 17a-8. The broker-dealer was required to have written AML policies and procedures, which outlined specific examples of suspicious activities that, according to the SEC, “should have triggered internal reviews and, in a number of instances, [(SAR)] filings.” According to the SEC, the broker-dealer failed to file SARs on the following activity: (i) accounts that traded an aberrational percentage of a given stock in a particular day; (ii) accounts of entities that had executives charged with criminal securities fraud; (iii) customer trading that was the subject of grand jury subpoenas and regulatory inquiries; (iv) liquidation of securities followed immediately by large cash transfers; (v) transactions in securities that were subsequently subject to SEC trading suspensions; and (vi) rejections by other broker-dealers of attempts by the firm to transfer customers’ securities. Despite these red flags, the brokerage firm failed to file SARs for more than five years. The case represents the SEC’s first against a firm for solely failing to file SARs.