An OFAC check means comparing a name against the lists published by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Two lists matter: the SDN List (Specially Designated Nationals — full blocking) and the Consolidated List (non-SDN programs such as sectoral sanctions and the foreign sanctions evaders list). As of this writing OFAC SDN holds about 19,300 records and the Consolidated list about 480; live counts here.
Manually, with the Treasury tool
- Open OFAC's Sanctions List Search.
- Enter the name; leave the score slider at the default (it is a fuzzy threshold, 100 = exact).
- Read the results: each row shows the program (SDGT, RUSSIA-EO14024, …), type and the score OFAC computed.
- Open the record to compare aliases, dates of birth, identifiers and addresses with what you know about your customer.
- Record what you searched, when, and your decision.
This works for a handful of names a day. It does not scale, cannot be re-run when the list changes, and produces no machine-readable trail.
By API
curl -X POST https://kycwire.com/api/v1/screen \
-H "Authorization: Bearer kw_…" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"name": "Gazprom Neft", "type": "Organization", "sources": ["ofac_sdn", "ofac_cons"]}'
The response lists candidates with a score, the alias that matched, the programs and the exact OFAC publication date the check ran against. Add birth_date or country to cut false positives; add a passport or registration number and an exact identifier hit outranks any name similarity.
Reading a hit
A score of 1.0 on an organisation with a unique name is as certain as it gets. A 0.7 on a common personal name is a prompt to look at the record — date of birth, nationality, the programs — not a verdict. OFAC's own guidance is the same: a name match is the start of the analysis, not the end.
Keep checking after onboarding
OFAC updates several times a week. A customer cleared in January can be listed in March. Register the name once with monitoring and you receive a webhook when a list version changes the result.
