As we have blogged, courts have held that financial institutions generally do not owe a duty of care to a noncustomer and that no special duty of care arises from the duties and obligations set forth in the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”), absent a special relationship or contractual relationship. Moreover, there is no private right of action stemming from the BSA. Nor does the BSA define a financial institution’s standard of care for the purposes of a negligence claim. A majority panel of the Eighth Circuit (“the Court”) very recently confirmed these principles in a detailed opinion which affirmed summary judgment in favor of a bank which had provided services to the alleged perpetrators of a $193 million Ponzi scheme, thereby rejecting claims brought by a Receiver on behalf of defrauded investors that the bank had aided and abetted fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and other claims.
After dissecting the record in detail, the Court determined in Zayed v. Associated Bank, N.A. — over a vigorous dissent — that the Receiver failed to present direct or circumstantial evidence that the bank actually knew about the Ponzi scheme being perpetrated by its former customers, much less that it substantially assisted the scheme. The Court emphasized the fact that evidence of possible “sloppy banking” and the existence of potential red flags fell short of the high bar required to sustain a claim for aiding and abetting a fraud against the third party non-customers.
Although the Zayed opinion is one of many cases rejecting AML-inspired tort claims by defrauded investors against a financial institution which had done business with a fraudster, it is notable for its methodical treatment of the facts — many of which appear in one form or another in other cases — regarding the various red flags which the Receiver claimed that the bank had missed, or the alleged misconduct which the Receiver claimed that bank personnel had perpetrated. The list of alleged compliance failures discussed and found insufficient to establish potential liability in Zayed demonstrates that, however rigorous AML/BSA obligations and programs may be for financial institutions, their alleged violations often fail to pave a path to recovery for civil plaintiffs. Continue Reading Alleged BSA Violations Do Not Support Civil Negligence/Fraud Claims – Again