Free OFAC SDN Sanctions Check

The Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List — usually shortened to the SDN list — is maintained by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. It is the most consequential sanctions list in the world, not because it is the longest, but because almost every major financial transaction touches the US dollar, and the dollar runs through the US banking system. If a person or entity is named on the SDN list, US persons (anywhere in the world) are blocked from dealing with them, and any property within US jurisdiction is frozen.

OFAC's authority sits on a stack of statutes — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Trading With the Enemy Act, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, and a long list of country-specific laws targeting Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Russia, and others. Each designation cites the specific program and legal basis, which is why an SDN entry carries program codes like [CYBER2], [RUSSIA-EO14024], or [SDNTK].

For US persons — citizens, permanent residents, US-incorporated entities, or anyone physically present in the United States — SDN compliance is a legal requirement, not a best practice. Civil penalties run up to $368,136 per transaction or twice the transaction value, whichever is greater. Willful violations bring criminal liability.

The list reaches well beyond US borders. Non-US banks that clear dollars through New York correspondents are exposed. Non-US companies with US customers, US shareholders, or US-source revenue get pulled in. The 50% rule extends blocking to any entity owned 50% or more (in aggregate) by SDN parties — so screening the SDN list alone is not enough; you also need to walk ownership chains.

The SDN list holds roughly 12,000 entries spread across individuals, companies, vessels, aircraft, and — since 2018 — cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Entries include aliases, dates of birth, passport and tax numbers, IMO numbers for ships, and on-chain addresses for crypto-related designations. Every entry references the sanctions program and the executive order or statute that authorized it.

The Sectoral Sanctions Identifications List (SSI) is a separate sub-list with narrower restrictions — it limits specific transaction types rather than blocking outright. Most screening tools, including SanctScan, treat SDN and SSI as one combined dataset.

OFAC publishes additions, removals, and modifications throughout the week. Sometimes a single name is added; sometimes a fresh sanctions package drops hundreds of entries in one go. The official source is the OFAC Recent Actions page plus the consolidated XML and CSV downloads. SanctScan ingests these directly, usually within minutes of publication.

That cadence is the real argument for continuous monitoring. A counterparty you cleared in February might be designated in April. One-shot screening at onboarding does not catch that.

A hit on the SDN list is not a verdict — it is a starting point. Common-name false positives are routine. First step: confirm the match against the additional identifiers in the entry — date of birth, place of birth, passport number, address, known aliases. If those do not line up, document the rejection and move on.

If the match holds, US persons must block the transaction or property and file a report with OFAC within 10 business days. This is a strict liability regime; "I didn't know" is not a defense. Most enforcement actions of the past decade have been driven by weak screening or willful blindness rather than by the underlying transactions themselves.