Trump Taj Mahal: $10 Million FinCEN Fine for Willful Anti-Money-Laundering Violations

Overview

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network does not issue $10 million fines for oversight failures. It issues them for "willful and repeated" violations — a legal standard meaning the entity knew what was required and chose not to comply.

The Trump Taj Mahal casino failed to file thousands of required reports on suspicious cash transactions. It failed to maintain anti-money-laundering controls whose purpose is to prevent criminals from using casinos to convert illegal cash into clean money. It had been fined before.

What AML Controls Do

Bank Secrecy Act requirements in the casino context exist because casinos are natural venues for money laundering: cash in, chips, play, cash out — converting the provenance of funds. Currency Transaction Reports and Suspicious Activity Reports are the regulatory infrastructure that makes this harder.

The Trump Taj Mahal systematically failed to file them. Thousands of transactions went unreported. The FinCEN consent order documents the scope of the failure across years of operation.

The Prior Violation

The 2015 fine explicitly noted that the Taj Mahal was being assessed a higher penalty because it had previously been cited for BSA violations. The Trump Plaza had faced prior FinCEN action in 1998. The pattern was not new.

The Ownership Timeline

Trump sold his stake in the casino company in 2009 following the company's fourth bankruptcy. He was not the owner at the time of the 2015 fine. He was the operator during the years the violations accumulated.