American Financial Solutions Company daVinci Payments Fined for Illegal Money Transfers to Cuba
daVinci Payments, also known as Swift Prepaid Solutions, has been fined $206,213 for illegally transferring a total of $549,134.89 to prepaid cards in Cuba. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed the fine on the company for 12,391 illegal transfers.
The company, based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, redeemed prepaid cards for users with IP addresses associated with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Crimea. However, daVinci discovered the flaw in its internal control and began preventing access to its platform from IP addresses associated with sanctioned countries.
The company’s customers financed the card programs themselves through an issuing bank, and daVinci provided digital or physical prepaid cards to authorized users. However, the company redeemed prepaid cards for 13 recipients who had used email addresses associated with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Crimea.
OFAC stated that daVinci did not exercise due caution or care when redeeming prepaid digital rewards cards to users who appeared to be located in sanctioned jurisdictions. However, the fine amount took into account mitigating factors, such as the company conducting an internal review and blocking access to its platform from sanctioned jurisdictions.
This is not the first case of a U.S. company being fined for violating sanctions against Cuba and other countries. In May, cryptocurrency trading company Poloniex agreed to pay a fine of $7.6 million for allowing 232 clients located in sanctioned jurisdictions to carry out online transactions related to digital assets.
The OFAC stated that these actions violate sanctions against the governments of Cuba, Crimea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The combined value of the transactions was $15.3 million between January 2014 and November 2019.