Compliance Expert Exposes Trump's Money Laundering Scam

0:00Michael Popok:I want to do a follow-up about Capital One's disclosure in its recent filing that they had in their anti-money laundering department as part of their compliance department, a fear or a suspicion that Donald Trump and his family were committing money laundering. That is a disclosure, a revelation that was forced into the public by Donald Trump himself because he sued Capital One down in Florida. I'll talk about the Southern District of Florida case and the judge, Judge Altman, the same judge presiding over the BBC defamation case that Donald Trump is also subjected to financial disclosures related to.

0:41Michael Popok:But in the case brought against Capital One, because they fired the client, which they're allowed to do under their client opening documents, their agreements, for all reasons, no reasons, or any reason. Um, Donald Trump said, oh, the reason he was, he and his family were fired and they were given several months up to six months to transfer their more than 300 accounts for their 400 entities that make up all of their assets to another bank is because there was suspicious activity within the accounts leading to the compliance department, which is, and the, uh, anti-money laundering department of Capital One to flag them.

1:26Michael Popok:They never got sufficient answers. And so they fired the client. There's many reasons that Capital One could have fired Donald Trump, the Trump family and the Trump organization. I mean, in and around the same time, the Trump organization was sued by the attorney general of New York for what's called persistent fraud in the operation of their business. And they were adjudged to be persistent fraudsters. And their company was put into a monitorship, which still exists over the Trump organization. That's one. Two, Donald Trump was a judge to be a sex abuser and that he was diverting money. And in the Stormy Daniels hush money cover-up case, where he was convicted of 34 felony counts of tax evasion, books and records fudging.

2:18Michael Popok:Those are also things that give banks concern. You also have in the fraud case, a fact that got missed, which is the auditors for Donald Trump fired him as well. The auditors who had been auditors for more than 10 years said, everything that we have said in our audited financial cannot be relied upon and cannot be trusted. We're resigning our engagement. We're not going to be as auditors any longer. We can't trust the financial information coming out of the Trump organization. These are all things that make compliance departments of financial services companies, and I worked closely with one in my prior life.

2:58It gets them upset, at the very least.

3:02Michael Popok:I haven't even talked about the other fact that three entities that are owned by Trump were successfully convicted of tax evasion and books and records fraud on 19 felony counts all within the last three years. So whether it's sex abuser, hush money cover-up case, persistent fraudster, 19 felony convictions, 34 felony convictions for hush money and books and records cover-up related to Stormy Daniels, or the two indictments for election interference and obstruction of justice, these are all good reasons a bank like Capital One would use, but they didn't even use any of those. Let me dive into this, putting on my financial services hat.

3:58I'm Michael Popak. You're on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. I didn't want the Capital One

4:05Michael Popok:disclosure in a federal filing I'll read to you from in a moment to kind of just go underwater are under the bridge as we cover other stories. It's that important. And from my experience as Deputy General Counsel of a Wall Street firm, work closely with the Compliance Department, work closely with anti-money laundering, the enforcement of Patriot Act rules and regulations, the enforcement of what we call Suspicious Activity Reports, or SARs. I wanted to give you the benefit of my knowledge. Okay, let's start. Capital One moved to dismiss for the third time the complaint of Donald Trump filed in federal court before Judge Altman.

4:49Judge Altman had already ruled that Capital One, under its own account opening documents, could fire a customer for any reason. Banks also have a requirement. It's called the know your

5:02Michael Popok:customer or know your account holder responsibility. It's part of regulations, banking regulations. You could lose your bank license if you don't comply with it. Anti-money laundering, Patriot Act compliance, Bank Secrecy Act compliance, know your customer. These are all things that are important and keep compliance officers and heads of banks up at night. It did me, okay? And I got involved when there was suspicious activity in an account. If there is suspicious activity in an account, somebody who is observing it, either auditing the account, using artificial intelligence to flag transactions in an account, has to fill out a suspicious activity report, an SAR.

5:50We call it a SAR. There must have been multiple SARs that were triggered by Donald Trump and his Trump organization's operation of more than 300 bank accounts.

6:02Michael Popok:What you look at in a SARS or what the compliance team in their audit or in their sampling or in their use of AI is looking for is suspicious, funny business going on. Deposits coming in, wires going out, checks being written, checks being written on funds that have not yet cleared. where the money is coming in from, the source of the money in. Because you not only have to know, if you have to know your customer, you not only have to know the business of the account holder, well, to think whether this transaction in or out, debit or credit, is legitimate or not, right? But you have to know where that money is coming from, the source of the funds in particular.

6:52Michael Popok:Because if the source of the funds, let's say is Russian or Chinese or mob or organized crime related, that's a problem. And the timing of transactions, when money comes in and out, how quickly it comes in and out, the velocity of the transactions also matters. So who is the company doing business with? Whose checks and money are they depositing? How are they being deposited? How money's being shifted around from other bank accounts, whether the internal revenue service should be alerted, the size of the transactions. Because for every suspicious sized account over a certain amount, which is usually$10 ,000, you have to fill out a suspicious activity report.

7:35And then you look at the body in a report, a compliance officer who works closely with a general counsel type like me will then review the files and flag the account.

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8:29Michael Popok:Take back control of your health. We've worked out a special offer from my audience. Receive 30 % off your first subscription order. Go to armrud.com slash legal AF or enter legal AF to get 30 % off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A dot com slash legal AF. This is what the good people at Capital One, surprising out of all the banks in America, Donald Trump was doing. I mean, I do banking at Capital One, but I was just surprising that that was the bank that he was actually doing business with. But in any event, let me get up for you the filing and we'll look at it together and we'll post it.

9:16So this is what they said in their motion. This is a motion to dismiss the complaint, which was brought for a violation of good faith and fair dealing or some sort of fraudulent concealment. And what they say is, here's where they fully confess as to why and how the decision was made. The Second Amendment complaint, that's Trump's complaint, concedes that Capital One's decision to terminate the accounts was expressly permitted by the governing agreement and instead rest on vague allegations of political discrimination that are not supported by any of the documents attached. To the contrary, those documents made clear that Capital One closed plaintiff's accounts for anti-money laundering reasons.

10:06The closures were the result of months of analysis and careful review by Capital One's AML team that reports to the compliance department in accordance with bank policies and regulatory guidance. Capital One never publicized the termination decision, nor its confidential internal process giving rise to the closure, and it permitted plaintiffs several months with extensions to find new banking services, which they did. In other words, we didn't want to out them. We didn't want to defame them or embarrass them. We didn't want to put them in a false light. You made us. You made us. And then when they go into greater detail, which they're forced to do on this motion to dismiss.

10:52This is what they say about that. So if I go to footnote four on page nine, it says the plaintiffs, which is always the Trump trust, make the conclusory claim that they could have explained the transactions underlying Capital One's assessment. But plaintiffs do not allege facts plausibly suggesting that any such explanation would have altered Capital One's determination or prevented the account closure. Indeed, the transaction patterns identified by Capital One are among the types of activity flagged by federal banking guidance. See Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council on Bank Secrecy Act, BSA, and AML Examination Manual, Money Laundering, and Terrorist Financing red flags.

11:42So here we go. Trump, the president of the United States, had bank accounts closed because of application of guidelines about money laundering and terrorist financing. They forced Capital One to put this in their brief. They could have just taken the loss, gone on to their new banking relationship with Charles Schwab and whoever else, which is what they're doing. But no, they forced Capital One, after they poked them with a stick, to come out and say, well, we think you were a money launderer or you were financing terrorism. And we don't care what you would have told us because it wouldn't have resolved the issues that we observed with months of our professionals, including former members of the banking community and the Department of Justice and law enforcement on the case.

12:36Is that what they wanted? That's better. This is what happens when you bring these defamation cases or these ridiculous cases that try to gain an advantage. They obviously thought the bank was going to fold and stroke a huge check for Donald Trump for his library or whatever else. And they're not doing it. Those days are over. That was ABC and CBS because they were bootlicking to try to get some approval from Trump's government. And they were willing to pay, you know, pocket change,$20 million a piece or so just to get them off their back. But the British Broadcasting Corporation doesn't care about that.

13:11Capital One doesn't care about that. So the Wall Street Journal doesn't care about that. New York Times doesn't. It's just yet another example. And the suspicious activity report in the world of financial services is a big deal. It keeps people like me in my former life up at night. You know, I would be called in by the the owner of the financial services company to give my report about why we'd be closing an account like this, ironically. And ironically, people in Donald Trump's own government, including Howard Lutnick, who runs Cantor Fitzgerald, who I worked for at one time, knows AML policy, knows Bank Secrecy Act, knows the Patriot Act, knows anti-money laundering, and knows know your client or know your customer requirements.

14:04Who's giving Trump guidance in any of these lawsuits? This is ridiculous. and kudos to Capital One for standing tall and Debovois-Plympton for being their lawyers in this matter. Now, let me end it this way. This is not going to help Donald Trump with his other case against the British Broadcasting Corporation because in that case, he's suing for$10 billion in damage and soon he wants to appeal to Judge Altman, the same federal judge in this case with Capital One who's presiding over the BBC case. he's going to try to oh i need to redo my complaint because i don't want to open up all my books and records because the magistrate judge has ordered that donald trump turn over all of his tax returns this is the trust and 400 entities all the bank bank records all the trust account records all the financial records to prove up his damages now he's claiming well the damages aren't that much i'll fix my complaint you think judge altman isn't going to remember what's going on here with Capital One, he is.

15:02And I know the Southern District of Florida really well. I live in Miami and I practice there. So until my next report here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal AF, take a minute, hit the free subscribe button. Help us to continue to grow our pro-democracy channel.

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