When Bank of America alerted financial regulators in 2020 to potentially suspicious payments from Leon Black, the billionaire investor, to Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, the bank was following a routine practice. The bank filed two "suspicious activity reports," or SARs, which are meant to alert law enforcement to potential criminal activities like money laundering, terrorism financing or sex trafficking. One was filed in February 2020 and the other eight months later, according to a congressional memorandum. SARs are expected to be filed within 60 days of a bank spotting a questionable transaction. But the warnings in this case ... were not filed until several years after the payments, totaling $170 million, had been made. By the time of the first filing, Mr. Epstein had already been dead for six months. The delayed filings have led congressional investigators to question if Bank of America violated federal laws against money laundering. Bank of America is not the only big bank to have been questioned about suspicious transactions involving Mr. Epstein. In litigation involving hundreds of Mr. Epstein's sexual abuse victims, it was disclosed that JPMorgan Chase had filed several SARs after the bank kicked him out as a client in 2013. Deutsche Bank, which subsequently became Mr. Epstein's primary banker, paid a $150 million fine to New York bank regulators, in part because of its due diligence failures in monitoring Mr. Epstein's financial affairs.