The Federal Reserve's Office of Inspector General said an employee in its Division of International Finance repeatedly triggered alerts over efforts to handle potentially sensitive information before retiring in July 2024, but investigators found insufficient grounds for a formal misconduct case. The employee had previously been flagged for copying confidential Federal Open Market Committee files to unencrypted USB drives and attempting to send such files to a personal email address. Alerts before the employee's departure involved printing, copying data into a notepad application, emailing potentially sensitive information to personal addresses and transferring files to an unencrypted Board-issued USB device. The inspector general said unclear records and numerous false positives prevented it from determining what information had been removed. The episode, including alerts shortly before a June 2024 trip to a restricted country, exposed systemic weaknesses in the Federal Reserve's handling of employee departures, the watchdog said. The Board agreed with recommendations to strengthen data-management practices and has taken steps to communicate policies more clearly while working on enforcement improvements.