Robinhood announced that it has agreed to pay $29.75 million in fines and restitution to drop the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) multiple investigations into the company’s oversight and compliance failures.
Robinhood Will Pay $30 Million to Drop US Regulatory Investigation
The agreement consists of:
- $26 million in civil fines
- $3.75 million compensation to affected customers
According to FINRA, Robinhood failed to respond to multiple adverse events related to potential misconduct that led to violations in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance, auditing practices, and disclosure requirements.
Key Findings from FINRA's Investigation
The regulator identified several significant compliance failures, including:
- Failure to Monitor Clearing Systems: Robinhood did not properly monitor its clearing system, leading to significant trading delays between March 2020 and January 2021, when the company restricted trading in meme stocks like GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment (AMC).
- Inadequate Fraud Detection: The company failed to detect, investigate or report manipulative trading activity, suspicious money movements and hacked customer accounts.
- Unauthorized Account Openings: Robinhood violated AML compliance requirements by opening thousands of accounts without properly verifying customer identities.
- Misleading Social Media Promotions: The Company did not appropriately monitor or maintain the social media communications of paid influencers, some of whom made misleading or unbalanced investment claims.
- Market Order Manipulation (“Catch”): Robinhood misrepresented how it processed market orders and converted them to limit orders without providing clear disclosure to customers.
Both Robinhood Financial and Robinhood Securities consented to FINRA's findings without admitting or denying the allegations.
This settlement follows a $45 million settlement Robinhood reached with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in January 2025, in which the company admitted to violations related to the storage of electronic communications and other securities law violations between 2020 and 2021.
*This is not investment advice.
