Wall Street Journal - Friday, December 20, 2002

"Western Union was accused by New york regulators of violating laws aimed at stemming the flow of terrorist money, marking the first time the Patriot Act has been used against a major financial firm. Officials cited a failure to file complete currency-transaction reports and susupicious-activity reports. Western Union agreed to pay an $8 million fine."

Ouch...

I remember a post in the last couple months that asked how the value of a good compliance function could be calculated.

Here's a link to the Reuters version, in case you don't subscribe to the WSJ:

http://money.cnn.com/2002/12/20/news/companies/westernunion.reut/index.htm

Thanks for the heads-up on the story. I love to be able to show management that others will now share our BSA-pain!

Thank you both for the article. It's good to know that all of the energy we put into complying with BSA and the USAPA is energy well spent. I only hope that WU fixes what is broken before more money launderers read that article and think they have an easy avenue for avoiding detection.

Yes, thank you! As much as its not good that this happened, its nice to be able to have something like this to show the people that think the Patriot Act is a load of qua qua that it isn't a joke!

The fine on WU sure makes this FISCA trade associations assertion on the compliance of check cashers and money transmitters with BSA & USA Patriot Act look very innacurate.

See article attached

http://www.aba.com/NR/rdonlyres/00006d1bdjuzswyuvyvwauxy/FiSCA%2bCheck%2bCashers%2bBroch2.pdf

Who gets all that money? From the fine, I mean?

I have to ask this: Is this article (Check Cashers are good) a joke? Are they blind? Unbelievable!!!

You, the taxpayer.

Yeah, right!

New York State Banking Department:

Press Release: http://www.banking.state.ny.us/pr021218.htm

Consent Agreement: http://www.banking.state.ny.us/ra021218.htm

Then I can expect my taxes to go down next year?