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Uphold HQ fined $72K in OFAC sanctions case
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2023-03-31T19:51:00
Uphold HQ, a California-based money services company, will pay $72,230 to settle charges levied by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) that it processed sanctioned transactions for persons in Iran and Cuba and government employees in Venezuela.
OFAC alleged Uphold or its affiliates processed 152 transactions totaling $180,576 with individuals in jurisdictions under U.S. sanctions from 2017-22. Uphold facilitates money service transactions in 184 countries across more than 200 currencies, including cryptocurrencies, according to its website.
Uphold allegedly allowed customers who self-identified during onboarding they were located in Iran and Cuba to complete transactions, despite being sanctioned jurisdictions. The customers indicated their country of origin in free text fields within their applications, which Uphold did not screen for sanctions compliance, said OFAC in its enforcement release published Friday.
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