Check any person or business against the SDN List, the Consolidated Screening List, and seven more global sanctions lists. Sub-second response. Free for single lookups.
An OFAC check verifies whether a person, company, or vessel appears on a list maintained by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control. In practice that mostly means the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List. U.S. persons have to run this check before onboarding a customer or processing a transaction, and OFAC enforces it under strict liability. No "didn't know" defense. SanctScan runs the check in under a second, free for single lookups, against the SDN List plus eight more sanctions lists in one pass.
Three steps, around thirty seconds from search to saved report. No integration needed. The same workflow is exposed over REST when you're ready to automate it.
Type the full legal name into the search bar above. For people, include middle names or patronymics where you have them. More tokens means a stronger match and fewer false positives.
You get every candidate match across nine sanctions lists with a 0–100 confidence score. Each result shows which list matched, which aliases fired, and the full entity record. Triage stays on the page.
Whether you cleared the hit or blocked it, capture the decision. We generate a timestamped PDF with the query, results, match scores, and your resolution note. It's saved to your screening history so a regulator can walk the trail later.
You can run an OFAC check directly on the Treasury search page. It works for one name. It breaks down once you have volume, and it leaves no audit trail worth showing a regulator. SanctScan uses the same engine whether you check one name or ten thousand. What changes is only how you submit the input and how you review the output.
Every check we run hits four record types across nine sanctions lists in one pass.
Natural persons designated on any sanctions list. Terrorists, narcotics traffickers, corrupt officials, proliferation actors, and more.
Companies, non-profits, government bodies. Also shell companies and front organizations that OFAC has flagged.
Named ships, aircraft, and other vehicles designated under OFAC's maritime and aviation sanctions programs.
The a.k.a. field on each SDN record: alternative names, transliterations, and prior identities. Searching only the primary name misses a lot.
Past OFAC, every check also runs against the EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions List, UN Security Council Consolidated List, UK OFSI, and the Canadian, Australian, Swiss, and Japanese national lists. This matters the moment you move money across borders. A party can be clean in the U.S. and designated in the EU. Or the other way around. See the full list breakdown.
Name-only matching against a global sanctions list will always produce false positives. Common names make it worse. The job of a decent OFAC engine isn't to eliminate them (you can't) but to rank them so your reviewer spends time on hits that actually matter.
| Score band | Interpretation | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| 90 – 100 | Near-certain match | Treat as confirmed. Block the transaction, freeze assets, file OFAC blocking report within 10 business days. |
| 70 – 89 | Possible match — review | Compare secondary identifiers (DOB, nationality, passport). Document rationale for clearing or escalating. |
| 50 – 69 | Weak similarity | Usually a different person with a shared name component. Document briefly and clear. |
| Below 50 | Noise | Not displayed by default. Available in the full result set for auditors. |
We show exactly why each record scored the way it did: which tokens matched, which aliases fired, whether secondary identifiers like date of birth were present on the record. With that visibility, a reviewer can close a false positive in seconds instead of minutes.
Drop in a CSV and screen thousands of customer names at once. We run the batch, return a scored result set, and export a PDF per entity. Useful for quarterly portfolio rescreenings.
Add an entity to continuous monitoring and we rescreen it on every sanctions list update. Email or webhook alerts fire only when the match state actually changes. No daily noise.
OFAC has issued nine- and ten-figure penalties against banks, fintechs, exporters, and crypto platforms in recent years. Strict liability means intent doesn't save you.
OFAC civil penalties apply per transaction, per violation. The numbers stack fast when an entire portfolio was screened poorly.
Willful violations carry criminal fines and prison time. Senior individuals can be personally on the hook.
You can be penalized even if you had no idea. "We didn't know" isn't a defense. Automated screening is.
Current penalty guidance is published at ofac.treasury.gov.
A compliance screening. It verifies whether a person, company, or vessel appears on any list maintained by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control. In practice that mostly means the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List. Every U.S. person has to run one before onboarding a customer or processing a transaction. OFAC enforces this under strict liability, so intent and knowledge don't factor in.
Type the person's or business's name into the search box at the top of this page and hit enter. You'll get matches from the SDN List and eight other sanctions lists in under a second, scored by match confidence. No signup for single checks. The free plan covers 25 automated checks per month.
Yes, assuming the underlying data and matching engine are sound. We pull sanctions data straight from OFAC's SDN feed and the Commerce Department's CSL API every 24 hours. Free checks use the exact same fuzzy-matching logic as paid ones. What paid tiers add is volume, automation, and audit features. Data quality is identical.
Each candidate gets a score from 0 to 100 based on name similarity, alias overlap, token order, and whether the record has identifiers (date of birth, place of birth, passport number). Above 90 is near-certain: block immediately. Between 70 and 90 needs human review, and a lot of these turn out to be common-name false positives. Below 70 is usually noise. We show the exact reason each record scored the way it did, so a reviewer can resolve quickly instead of guessing.
A false positive is a result where your customer's name matches a sanctioned party but they're genuinely different people. This happens constantly with common names like 'Mohammed Ali' or 'John Smith'. You resolve it by comparing secondary identifiers (DOB, nationality, address) and writing down why you cleared it. Our PDF report captures the resolution note next to the raw result, so a regulator sees both the hit and the reason it was cleared.
A confirmed match triggers a few obligations. Block the transaction or account immediately. Do not proceed. Freeze any assets tied to the designated party. File a blocking report with OFAC within 10 business days, and consider whether a SAR to FinCEN is also in order. And never tip off the customer that they matched a sanctions list.
The same search works for both. OFAC designates entities as well as individuals. Type the full legal name and we'll match against corporate records, vessels, and aircraft alongside natural persons. One catch: for corporate screening, check beneficial owners separately. A non-designated company can still be controlled by designated individuals under OFAC's 50% rule, and a name search on the company alone won't catch that.
Yes. The REST API takes JSON queries and returns scored match results with list sources and full entity metadata. Trigger a check from your onboarding flow, wire it into payment authorization, or schedule batch checks across your customer database. Webhook callbacks fire on monitoring alerts. API access comes with Starter and above.
OFAC updates its lists several times a week, so onboarding-only screening doesn't hold up. Standard practice is daily rescreening of your full customer base. That's impractical to do manually and trivial with continuous monitoring. We rescreen every monitored entity on every list update and send an email or webhook alert only when the match state changes, so you're not sifting through noise.
The core OFAC check focuses on U.S. lists. SanctScan extends every check to include EU Consolidated Financial Sanctions, UN Security Council Consolidated, UK OFSI, and the Canadian, Australian, Swiss, and Japanese lists in the same pass. Each hit is tagged by source so you know which sanctions regime applies. This is particularly important on cross-border transactions, where a party can be clean under one regime and designated under another.
Free plan gets you 25 automated checks a month. Bulk CSV upload, continuous monitoring, and audit-ready PDF reports all included.
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