OFAC screening for crypto payments explained

How to check a crypto payment's recipient against sanctions before the transaction is finalized.

TL;DR

TL;DR: A crypto payment to a blocked wallet or person violates OFAC even if the sender did not know. Screen the recipient address and entity against the SDN List before the payment is sent or settled.

Payments are where sanctions bite

Every crypto payment is a transfer of value to a specific recipient, which is exactly what OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control) regulates. The SDN List, the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, now includes wallet addresses, and sending to one of them is a violation regardless of intent. Penalties start at $356,000 per violation.

What to check before sending

A complete check covers two things: the recipient wallet address and the entity behind it. The 50 Percent Rule means an entity 50 percent or more owned by a blocked person is itself blocked, so a bare address match is not enough when the recipient is a business. The check should run at payment time, against a current list, because the list changes.

Automating the check at send time

agentmail, the screening API at sanctionsai.dev, is built for this moment. One HTTP call under 100 ms returns clean (ALLOW) or flagged (BLOCK), checking 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets and 19,218 SDN names across 16 jurisdictions, synced hourly. The flow is simple: screen, then send if clean, and hold if flagged.