MEMBER HIGHLIGHT - SER member Mike Evans recently shared an article titled "Bank Secrecy Act and Suspicious Activity Report Privilege in Civil Discovery." The article notes that a landmark federal court ruling in Millstein v. Wells Fargo Bank has significantly narrowed the scope of the Bank Secrecy Act’s Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) privilege, preventing financial institutions from broadly shielding internal fraud-investigation files from civil discovery. In the Southern District of Florida, Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman's decision clarified that federal regulations only protect information that would reveal the existence of a SAR, striking down the legal fiction that all internal investigatory conduct is automatically privileged. Consequently, banks are now required to produce critical evidence such as internal Unusual Activity Reports and factual narratives of transactions, provided they do not directly contain a recommendation to file a SAR. This ruling serves as a critical course correction for plaintiffs' litigators, providing a new framework to compel discovery and establish a financial institution's actual knowledge of fraud or money laundering. Mike is the founder of Vega Compliance. You can read the full article on his website, along with other insights on his blog.
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