If your NJ TD Bank is closing you should be mad as hell

Does anything go today? Corrupt politicians blatantly get away with bad behavior. Convicted felons elected as president. New Jersey has always been a morality cesspool. But you would think that when it comes to those we trust with our money, we might finally care about things.

Dozens of TD Banks are closing around the country, and New Jersey has the biggest number of closures. Five locations in the Garden State will be gone by June 5.

85-107 Pompton Ave, Cedar Grove

191 E. Route 70, Marlton

555 Warren Ave, Spring Lake Heights

145 Skyline Dr, Ringwood

1 Royal Rd, Raritan Twp

They'll tell you it's about a focus on digital banking and shifting consumer habits. But is that the whole story?

Last October, TD Bank pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. It was the largest bank in our nation's history to do so.

Their accountability was so lax that it became easy for criminals to use their bank to launder their dirty money, the feds said. It was so pervasive that TD Bank employees openly joked about how easy their company made it for criminals to move their money, according to then Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“From fentanyl and narcotics trafficking, to terrorist financing and human trafficking, TD Bank’s chronic failures provided fertile ground for a host of illicit activity to penetrate our financial system,” then-Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said.

In one case, a man bribed TD Bank employees with $57,000 in gift cards to move over $470 million through their branches.

There were piles of cash dumped on a bank’s counters and ATM withdrawals that totaled 40 times to 50 times higher than the daily limits. Red flags all around.

Some bank employees complained about the lax standards. Those complaints went unheeded.

The stories go on and on.

Who gets hurt in the end? We do.

My son has a TD Bank account he opened before any of this came to light. After the company was caught and paid a $3 billion historic settlement, when I wanted to simply put a few hundred dollars in his account, I had to jump through hoops. He's away at college in Vermont, so it's natural for a parent to make a very small deposit like this. But suddenly I had to give my Social Security number, show my ID, write down what I did for a living, etc. Just for a few hundred dollars, deposit into my son's account, who shares my address and my last name. Recently, they stopped allowing it entirely.

In my opinion, their upper echelon had to know exactly what they were doing moving those millions around (after all, they pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering,g didn't they?) Yet I was then treated like the criminal.

With a $3 billion settlement loss over the criminal conviction, I find it impossible to believe their restructuring and branch closures aren't somewhat related. In the end, the irony of TD Bank's slogan hits me. "America's most convenient bank." Yeah, it was for the fentanyl trade.