Another former TD employee charged in money laundering probe

financialpost.com:

The U.S. Department of Justice has arrested and charged another former Toronto-Dominion Bank employee with conspiracy to launder money, the latest in a string of charges tied to the lender’s massive compliance failures at its American retail business.

Leonardo Ayala, 24, who worked at a Toronto-Dominion branch in Doral, Florida, from February to November 2023, made a first appearance in a Miami court on Tuesday, the Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday.

Beginning last June, Ayala allegedly used his role as a “customer liaison” to facilitate money laundering by issuing dozens of debit cards for accounts that another employee had opened in the names of shell companies. The accounts were then allegedly used to launder millions of dollars in drug money through cash withdrawals at Colombian ATMs.

The charge against Ayala comes two months after the Justice Department, United States Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced a resolution of sweeping probes into the Canadian bank’s failures to catch money laundering by drug cartels and other criminals. The bank agreed to pay almost US$3.1 billion in fines and other penalties and faces a cap on its U.S. retail-banking assets.

Documents filed by the Justice Department outlined three separate money-laundering conspiracies perpetrated through Toronto-Dominion bank branches.

Two former Toronto-Dominion employees were already publicly charged in the same conspiracy as Ayala, which was dubbed the “Colombian ATM typology.” One of the employees was from New Jersey and a second was from Florida, and prosecutors said in October they had identified a total of five bank insiders who helped the money-laundering ring, typically in return for a fee.

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