Therefore, Western Union will pay a USD 586 million fine after pleading guilty to charges of wilfully failing to run an effective anti-money laundering program and aiding and abetting wire fraud with the US Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and the US Attorneys Offices of the Middle and Eastern districts of Pennsylvania, Central District of California and Southern District of Florida.
Among the allegations are criminals who contacted victims in the US posing as family members, potential employers or people awarding some kind of prize asking for money to be wired to them. The companys agents were often complicit in the schemes, the FTC said, and sometimes took a cut of the money.
Previous cases have also established that the company failed to halt the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to human traffickers in China and drug traffickers in other parts of the world, as well as not adhering to laws requiring verification and investigation of daily transfer limits.
The settlement requires Western Union to block money transfers to any person who is the subject of a fraud report, provide clear warnings to consumers about fraud on their paper and electronic forms, refund fraudulently induced money transfers if the company did not follow proper anti-fraud protocol and to increase the availability for how consumers can file fraud complaints.
Still, Western Union said in a press release that it has increased compliance consistently during the last five years and has dedicated about 20% of its employees to compliance functions, noting the issues it settled occurred mostly between 2004 and 2012.
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