Former Florida TD Bank employee indicted in cartel money laundering scheme

New York
CNN
—

A former Florida-based TD Bank employee was arrested for his role in a massive money laundering scheme by drug cartels. The US government previously fined the bank $3 billion.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey announced that Leonardo Ayala, 24, was arrested and charged with one count of money laundering conspiracy.

Arrest followed record fine TD Bank He was sued in October after the US Department of Justice said there were “long-term, widespread and systemic deficiencies” in its transaction-tracking procedures.

More than 90 percent of the transactions went unmonitored between January 2018 and April 2024, which “allowed three money laundering rings to transfer more than $670 million through TD Bank accounts,” according to a source. legal archive

It is rare for the government to go after a bank employee in such cases. But Justice and Treasury department officials are more concerned about cartels using the U.S. banking system in 2024 to launder proceeds from the sale of fentanyl and other drugs.

Couriers laundering money for the cartels are “opening accounts here in banks big and small in the U.S.,” a senior Treasury official told CNN in May.

Ayala worked at a TD Bank store in Doral, Florida, near Miami, in 2023 and began using her position as an employee in June 2023 to facilitate money laundering, the US District Court in New Jersey alleges.

Another TD Bank employee in New Jersey opened fake shell accounts, and Ayala then allegedly issued dozens of debit cards to those accounts in exchange for bribes.

The accounts Ayala allegedly helped distribute “were used to launder narcotics proceeds through ATM withdrawals in Colombia. The investigation revealed that millions of dollars were laundered into Colombia through Ayala’s service accounts,” according to a US attorney in New Jersey. press release.

A shell account from a company that issued Ayala’s debit cards was used to move more than $500,000 from the United States to Colombia through ATMs, complaint complains Debit cards from another shell company were used to move more than $800,000 between the two companies.

Ayala appeared in federal court in Miami on Tuesday and was released on location supervision and $100,000 bond. The US Attorney said there is one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering 20 years in prison and a fine of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered.

CNN has reached out to TD Bank for comment. CNN is working to contact an attorney for Ayala.

In October, TD Bank CEO Bharat Masrani said in a statement: “This is a difficult chapter in our bank’s history. These failures occurred as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders.”

The Canadian bank said it would step up money-laundering surveillance efforts and hire more than 700 new specialists. The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will be subject to four years of monitoring.

TD Bank’s October fine resulted in $1.3 billion in fines from FinCEN, $1.8 billion to the U.S. Department of Justice and a guilty plea to resolve an investigation by the U.S. government that the bank violated the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering.

CNN’s Matt Egan and Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.