Has anyone gotten an e-mail from Bridger Systems stating that they were told by the FBI that the Control List was not to be used by financial institutuions anymore and that the Federal Reserve was going to make a statement regarding this? What gives?

Yes, I just received the same message. We are not to continue to screen our customers or transactions against this list.

It is posted at their website.

www.ofaccompliance.com

Has anyone else actually heard this from the FBI, though other than Bridger?

Here's the latest from CNN:
FBI officials said Tuesday they have "lost control" of an agency-created watch list of people wanted for questioning following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Additionally, agency officials acknowledged that the list, which has gone through several manifestations, has "taken on a life of its own." and has shown up on several Web sites and contains names of people who have been cleared of any possible connection to last year's attacks.

This disturbing part is - I'm am not at all shocked by this. What burns me is how much we have all agonized over this list - should we use it? Not use it? Examiners saying one thing, the written instructions saying something different.

Why do I have a feeling that the Treasury Department release regarding the FinCEN requests may have sparked this announcement?

The Treasury Department notice stated:
It must be recognized that this moratorium does not cover the OFAC List or the Control List. Both of those lists will continue as usual. In addition, in the case of a national emergency, additional instructions will be announced as needed.

So what did Treasury MEAN by continuing the Control List as usual?

I believe these are different issues, but the last I heard was the moratorium on 314(a), but all others continue. Then it sounds like the control list was compromised. But I have nothing official on that.

Lets see, send it out in e-mail to thousands of banks, unsecured, unencrypted. Could there be a security problem here?

What I read from it is that the Control List has been out for quite awhile. The usefullness of the list, over time, drops. I get the feeling that, as we banks were fretting over what exactly was expected of us with respect to the Control List, the FBI probably wasn't even thinking about it. After all, the names I've seen on the news with respect to terrorists apprehended in this country are nowhere to be found on that Control List.

That's why I get the feeling that when the announcement came out, someone from the FBI read it and said "Control List? Bank's are still checking THAT old thing?"

The Wall Street Journal ran a large article on the Control List in its Nov. 19, 2002 edition.

All I can tell you is that I received a call from FED Miami around about Thursday or Friday verifying if I was still the contact FOR the control list. Have not received either any direction resulting from that nor a Supplement 4 yet.

Bonnie,
Where did you get the information regarding the Treasury Department memorandum? I have not seen anything on this yet. I keep checking www.treas.gov and www.fincen.gov and have not seen any bulletins on this topic. I have also looked at the web sites of the OTS, OCC, FDIC, and FRS and have not seen anything there.

Here is the CNN Press Release regarding the Control List:

CNN Press Release

Other than the Compliance Alert from Bridger, I have not seen anything else.

Hey! I got a call from the Fed in Miami also wanting to verify my email address but they didn't mention the control list. I was quite busy at the time and didn't pay enough attention to the lady.

RANT WARNING----
OK!!! That's my story and I'm sticking to it. From the very beginning, I have felt that the Control List was not a part of a bank's CIP program. First of all, the instructions with the list tell us that it is a snapshot in time and not for ongoing monitoring. Secondly, we knew at the time that this list contained the names of individuals that the government "suspected" of "possible" involvment in terrorist activity. Never, never did they say that names would be dropped from the list when cleared by the agency. So, why would we even consider monitoring a list that clearly indicated that monitoring was neither required nor desired. Sorry guys, but the CIP term "government lists" is much too vague to make this assumption. Does the Treasurey have authority over the FBI in that Treasury can tell us what to do with an FBI list in direct contradiction to what the FBI told us to do with the list? It appears that CNN and Bridger also make the case.

I don't know about you, but as for me, I had planned to ignore the list until my own examiner told me in an exam that it would be "required". Even then, I am sure that we would have had a healthy discussion regarding the rights of suspects and how a bank would know that they were no longer suspects.

Whew-----I feel better! OK, rant over, back to data integrity.

It is my understanding that the control lists were to be one time checks. While it is great to have a service provider who will run your customer file against the list, it was still to be a one time check. I think several companies were treating the control list the same as the OFAC list and including it when checking new customers and when doing full file comparisons. I know our processor was doing that.

Finally someone in Washington caught wind of this and realized that we were monitoring customers with these lists which are no longer any good. I guess what we have here is a lack of communication !

The same thought occurred to me. Since it was intended to be a one-time check, they may have assumed it died shortly after distribution, as it should have.

The FBI isn't used to someone complying so thoroughly with their requests - they didn't realize that banks take compliance so seriously!

OK.......I had a phone message this morning from the Fed Miami wanting to confirm that I am the one to receive the "control list". I posted earlier as anon...didn't realize that I was not loggin in.....that I got a call for my email address from them Friday.

Wonder what they are up to? I would have asked this last one but when I called back I got her voice mail.

It is kinda scary that our government is uh...out of control!

Thank you. I didn't think that the Control List required ongoing monitoring, but so many BOL people talked about it that I thought I must have missed something.

It's possible that Bridger misunderstood the private watch lists that the FBI distributed to airlines and rental car agencies for The Control List. For instance, CNN reported in July that Omar Shishani was captured in Detroit with $12mm in bogus cashiers checks because he was on a watch list. Well, if you look at The Control List, you'll notice that his name is not on the list. Also, Bridger does not tell us anything new because according to the instructions, we were only suppose to perform a one-time search.

In reply to:

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Sorry guys, but the CIP term "government lists" is much too vague to make this assumption.

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Well, the term was vague, and I think that's why we had people assuming that "government lists" also meant the Control List. The FBI said it was a one time check, but the proposed CIP didn't really say. They left it open to interpretation. I think that, in many people's minds, they felt best to play it conservative.

As I just posted as CIP news, I have just read that "government lists which are to be checked will be identified when they are issued as lists that are covered under Section 326 of the USA Patriot Act and, thus, under the new Customer Identification Program Rule"

If this is true, maybe it will answer all our questions!

There are many vendors out there that just like to take the ball and run...so to speak! (There are also some patient and reputable ones!) I am not so sure that these vendors were confused, but rather people were looking for automated solutions, so the vendors stepped in and offered people what they wanted.
In my experience you have to be very leary of the sales pitch! These people tend to twist things just a bit and put alot of pressure on. That's where many compliance issues get confused. If they were trying to sell you a CIP policy this summer they weren't saying..."We don't know what the final rules will be....but I think this is going to be close so you better buy it."

Mr. Zavoina is correct, as usual, that we have different issues here. The CNN report that is quoted earlier in this string is referring to another FBI list, not the Control List.

And while the FBI has not yet put out any announcement regarding the use or non-use of the Control List, the fact is that the new FinCen requests do replace the Control List. The federal regulators are devising an announcement to the banking industry that will discuss the so-called 314(a) process. I don't know the timing of that announcement. AR.