Dive Brief:

• Two former TD Bank employees have been sentenced to prison for their involvement in money laundering and fraud schemes, the Justice Department said last week.
• Former assistant store manager Wilfredo Aquino, 47, of New York City used his position to enable a money laundering network to move hundreds of millions of dollars through TD Bank accounts between 2019 and February 2021, according to a July 15 Justice Department news release. He was sentenced to 46 months in prison. 
• Between January and May 2021, another former TD Bank employee, Edward Low, 31, of Flushing, New York, took bribes and passed confidential customer information to co-conspirators outside the bank, who then used it to access customer accounts and steal money, the DOJ said. Low was sentenced to 24 months in prison. 

Dive Insight:

Aquino worked with money laundering network leader Da Ying Sze, also known as David, between 2019 and 2021. Sze and his co-conspirators moved about $474 million through TD accounts by depositing cash at the bank’s branches, mainly those in New York and New Jersey.

In February 2022, Sze pleaded guilty to coordinating a $653 million money laundering conspiracy, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and bribing bank employees, the DOJ said. The scheme was reportedly tied to the sale of illicit fentanyl. 

The 2021 case against Sze spurred the DOJ’s investigation into TD’s anti-money laundering deficiencies. TD failed to monitor $18.3 trillion in customer activity, allowing three laundering networks to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars through the lender’s accounts, the DOJ said in October 2024. The Toronto-based bank agreed to pay more than $3 billion in penalties and had its U.S. retail bank assets capped at $434 billion.

AML remediation “continues to be the bank's top priority, and TD actively cooperated with law enforcement to support their investigation,” a TD Bank spokesperson said by email Tuesday. “TD has made strong progress in rebuilding its AML program, including through deep investments in talent, training, process improvements, and technology.”

Although some other TD branches were used for money laundering activity, Sze’s network laundered the most money through Aquino’s Midtown Manhattan TD store, the DOJ said. No one processed more transactions for the network than Aquino, the DOJ said in January. Aquino and Sze “periodically exchanged text messages about [Sze]’s account activity,” according to court documents. 

As part of the money laundering scheme, Aquino processed about 1,680 official bank checks at TD for Sze and his co-conspirators, totaling about $92 million. 

Almost all of the checks were funded with a corresponding cash deposit above $10,000, requiring the bank to file a currency transaction report. Aquino never named Sze as the “conductor” on reports, despite knowing Sze was conducting deposits, the DOJ said.

Aquino was also aware TD had closed other accounts connected to Sze for suspicious activity, and a colleague warned Aquino that Sze’s activity “looks like money laundering,” prosecutors said. 

In February 2021, Aquino facilitated three of Sze’s money laundering transactions, which totaled nearly $2 million in cash, in a third party’s account, and failed to report Sze as the conductor, the DOJ said.

In return, Sze gave Aquino retail gift cards totaling about $11,000. 

Aquino pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to launder monetary instruments.

Separately, Low, also known as “Mang Wah Low” and “Eddie Low,” processed illicit transactions and facilitated about $484,572 in fraud at TD.

He received about $26,700 in bribes.

And from May to August 2022, while working at another bank, Low took a bribe to open an account in the name of a shell company, and his co-conspirators used the account to facilitate $47,195 of fraud, the DOJ said. 

Low pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution and making false bank entries or reports as a bank employee.  

In May, another former TD Bank employee, Cheungkin Lam, also known as Kelvin Lam, pleaded guilty to defrauding the lender’s customers and bribing an employee at another bank to falsify bank records. He worked at a branch in Fresh Meadows, New York.