Former Florida TD Bank employee charged in cartel money laundering scheme

By Ramishah Maruf, CNN

New York (CNN) — A former Florida-based TD Bank employee was arrested for his alleged role in a massive money-laundering scheme by drug cartels for which the US government previously fined the bank $3 billion.

The US attorney’s office in the District of New Jersey announced that Leonardo Ayala, 24, was arrested and charged on one count of money laundering conspiracy.

The arrest follows the record fine TD Bank faced in October, after the US Department of Justice said it had “long-term, pervasive, and systemic deficiencies” in its procedures for monitoring transactions.

More than 90% of transactions went unmonitored between January 2018 to April 2024, which “enabled three money laundering networks to collectively transfer more than $670 million through TD Bank accounts,” according to a previous legal filing.

It’s rare for the government to go after an individual bank employee in this kind of case. But Justice and Treasury department officials have grown more concerned in 2024 by cartels’ use of the US banking system to launder proceeds from the sale of fentanyl and other drugs.

Couriers laundering money for the cartels “are opening accounts in banks big and small here in the US,” 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 his position as an employee to facilitate the laundering in June 2023, a complaint in the US District Court in New Jersey said.

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

Those accounts Ayala allegedly assisted in distributing were “used to launder narcotics proceeds through cash withdrawals at ATMs in Colombia. The investigation has revealed that millions of dollars were laundered to Colombia through accounts Ayala serviced,” according to a New Jersey US attorney’s office press release.

The shell account of one company that Ayala issued debit cards for was used to move over $500,000 from the United States to Colombia via ATM withdrawals, the complaint alleges. Debit cards for another shell company were used to move over $800,000 between the two companies.

Ayala appeared in Miami federal court on Tuesday and was released on location monitoring and a $100,000 bond. The US attorney’s office said a money laundering conspiracy charge carries up to 20 years in prison and and either a $500,000 fine 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 took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders.”

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

TD Bank’s October fine included a $1.3 billion penalty to FinCEN, $1.8 billion to the US Justice Department and a guilty plea to resolve the US government’s investigation that the bank violated of the Bank Secrecy Act and allowed money laundering.

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

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