TradeStation to pay $1.11 million to settle OFAC sanctions violations tied to Iran, Syria and Crimea trades

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2026 — TradeStation Securities Inc., a Florida-based online brokerage, agreed to pay $1,110,661 to settle potential civil liability with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control over 481 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs, according to an enforcement release issued Tuesday. The case was deemed non-egregious and voluntarily self-disclosed.

OFAC said the violations occurred from June 21, 2021, to June 15, 2022, when customers located in Iran, Syria and the Crimea region of Ukraine were able to access TradeStation’s mobile platform and execute trades because of a series of sanctions compliance failures. The trades totaled $4,442,645.

The agency said one layer of geo-blocking on the firm’s mobile platform had been ineffective since 2018 because proprietary software routed checks through a U.S.-based server rather than the user’s actual IP address. A separate firewall-based control was then left disabled for nearly a year after an employee failed to reenable it following a cloud-services update in June 2021.

OFAC also said TradeStation lacked effective testing to confirm its sanctions controls were working and failed for more than eight months to address the disappearance of daily third-party alerts meant to flag blocked access attempts from sanctioned jurisdictions.

In explaining the penalty, OFAC cited TradeStation’s failure to exercise a minimal degree of caution, the harm caused by giving sanctioned persons access to the U.S. financial system, and the firm’s status as a sophisticated, heavily regulated market participant. Mitigating factors included prompt remedial steps, limited revenue from the trades, and cooperation with the investigation. TradeStation earned less than $2,000 in revenue from the apparent violations, OFAC said.

OFAC said the settlement underscores the need for financial firms to test and audit sanctions controls regularly rather than relying on systems to work as designed.