EagleBank, a community bank operating in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and its parent company, Eagle Bancorp Inc., recently entered into a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve an investigation into alleged Bank Secrecy Act violations. Under the agreement, which was signed on June 30, 2026, EagleBank agreed to pay more than $9.7 million, consisting of a $9,057,821.62 fine and $736,515 in forfeiture tied to overdraft-fee proceeds from accounts involved in an alleged scheme. The Bank also agreed to strengthen its anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (“AML/CFT”) program, cooperate with the DOJ’s investigation, and report any violations of federal criminal law to the Department.
According to the non-prosecution agreement, EagleBank admitted that it willfully failed to maintain an adequate AML/CFT program from 2010 to 2021. The Bank also admitted to allowing two customers to engage in a check-kiting scheme for more than a decade. The DOJ described check-kiting as a fraud in which an accountholder writes checks exceeding available funds and exploits processing delays between banks to create the appearance of coverage. The Bank allegedly enabled two unnamed customers—a son and his father who was a friend and business partner of EagleBank’s former chairman and CEO—to engage in the scheme. The Bank’s senior executives allegedly overrode compliance personnel’s repeated efforts to close the accounts and stop the alleged illicit conduct. According to the DOJ, EagleBank’s facilitation of the scheme caused another financial institution to lose nearly $6.3 million.