Yes. They would start a investigation. Are you so sure you are squeaky clean? Do you want a tax audit?
It is their business, they are required by law to do so.
But yes, tellers and wire agents are also supposed to look for fraud, and pulling lots of cash often means the person is being taken in by a scamster.
Sure, and if a known business has a known pattern of cash sales in that area, that’s fine.
KYC.
What they are looking for is transactions just under the 10000 limit. But why would you do this?
It would not be illegal, but perhaps SAR worthy.
I’ve been through endless hours of anti-money laundering training even though I don’t process deposits or withdrawals or deal with customers. Question everything is going to be the standard going forward.
I’d support a constitutional privacy amendment stating that the people have a right to deal in cash, and that possession of cash, in any amount, is not by itself probable cause of criminal activity.
It’s how terrorists and drug dealers are caught. But possession of cash is not probable cause now. And you can deal in cash all you want.
You just have to fill a form if it is over $10k. And not structure cash trans to avoid that form.
Oh, that is such a bad idea. Cops routinely confiscate thousands of dollars in cash from suspected drug dealers and then put the burden of proof on the civilian to show that the money was completely unrelated to drugs before they can get it back. Having your signature on a piece of paper where you plainly stated that you intended to spend the money on drugs means you can kiss your money goodbye. I have read several stories about legitimate business owners (like a flower shop) who were on their way to the bank to deposit several thousand dollars cash, got pulled over for speeding, and had their cash confiscated, then couldn’t prove that the money wasn’t drug related. So, you have a legitimate business where lots of your customers pay cash? That’s a nice front for money laundering. Now prove that you aren’t laundering money. Good luck with that. Why make it harder for yourself by fabricating evidence against you?
The bank doesn’t care what you do and won’t do anything to you. They’re required to comply with anti-money laundering laws and have implemented a form to do it. If the government some day prosecutes you/convicts you for money laundering, they can say they did their due diligence by asking what you were doing, you refused, as noted in their record, to reply, and they had no further ability to pursue the matter. Basically it just protects them in case you’re a bad guy, but from a business perspective it’s something they’re doing to comply with government regulations/laws, unless the bank itself actually thought you were a criminal they would probably give very little thought to any of it. It’s just something their legal department came up with they have to keep on file.
My dad once spent 18 hours crossing from Canada into the United States because he thought making a smart ass remark to U.S. customs agents was funny if you didn’t actually have anything to hide.
All these dumbass rules are giving a huge pain in the ass to legal cannabis businesses. The federal government refuses to acknowledge that weed is legal in many states now, and refuses to allow cannabis businesses to use banks and credit card companies. So they have to deal in cash, no way around it. They have to keep enormous amounts of cash on premises, they have to make large transactions with it to keep, say, a dispensary stocked and the growers they pay in cash inherit the headache when they try to go deposit that cash to pay their fucking bills.
The ostensible reasoning is to prevent money laundering, yet companies like HSBC get barely a slap on the wrist for outright laundering nearly a billion dollars in straight up cartel money. Which leads me to conclude that the “money laundering” excuse is basically just a smokescreen to hide the fact that what the PTB in the world want is a cashless society, where the banks have access to all the fees they want to charge and all it takes to completely break someone is about two keystrokes and hey presto, you’re destitute. The full surveillance state wants to know about every place you go, every dollar you spend and every relationship you have. Cash makes it harder to get that total surveillance.
Plus it makes it easier for the cops to grab your assets and never give them back, like the ones who were just forced to return 20K they stole at a traffic stop to a stripper–you’d think the glitter all over the money would have tipped them off she wasn’t bullshitting about how she got the cash but you’d be wrong about that. She got her money back, but there are thousands who never did and never will.
This. This isn’t KYC or AML, this is PSBS - Police State Bull Shit.
This hasn’t happened to me, but if it did I would be infuriated and refuse to fill out the form also. If it happened again, I’d look for another bank, and would tell them exactly why I’m changing banks after XX years.
Amounts under $10k are at the discretion of the particular bank, and this creeping trend of trying to actively track every cash transaction ever regardless of amount is an outrage (which judging by the thread, apparently only outrages the tiny minority of us who don’t enjoy living in an ever-expanding police and surveillance state).
What’s next, ID is required for every comment online? Your car is mandatorily tracked with GPS everywhere it goes? People who eschew using credit and debit cards for most transactions routinely come under audit by the IRS because they must be criminals?
Curiously, I just had to do my Anti-Money Laundering CE last week.
Yes, it’s to track who is making large cash deposits and withdrawals. But don’t think avoiding cash or keeping it low will get you out of it. That $47K you withdrew a while back? You may not have had to do anything about it but I guarantee someone at the bank had to review the transaction and file a report on it.
What they’re really looking for is patterns. If one person - or group of persons - is continually getting reports filed they’ll end up on ‘enhanced supervision’ whereby the IRS or the FBI (depending on whether there’s concern about tax avoidance or criminal or terrorist activity) will begin reviewing ALL transactions down to the penny. Those are not people who will give up looking and they’re pretty good at finding things even if those things aren’t there.
So head’s up.
And why should a hypothetical antique seller have to answer these questions? If the police suspect you of illegal structuring, isn’t the onus on them to prove your guilt, rather than the onus being on you to prove your innocence? (Yes, I realize that it can be pragmatic to proactively cooperate to avoid your money and possibly your person being seized on bogus charges. But like the OP, I find the very idea of having to do this to be abhorrent.)
I was constantly worried about fall afoul of this a couple of years back. I withdrew $9,650 on the first of each month from my company account. I did that for about 18 months and kept waiting for someone to show up and accuse me of structuring. It never happened. Possibly because I walked across the street and immediately deposited it in another bank. Doing it in person and cash made the funds available quicker then doing it electronically.
You are conflating the question of the burden required for a criminal conviction with the burden required for authorities to look into a potential crime. If people do things that may be violations of the law, the authorities are well within their powers to ask questions (just as the subject is well within their constitutional rights to refuse to answer them). The question of the burden of proof to establish guilt is a long way down the road from authorities just asking about a pattern of cash transactions.
With respect, I’m not. All I was saying was that if the authorities suspect you of a crime, then you should not be made to feel that you have to entertain their suspicions by responding to their questions. Let them build their case without your involvement; if you really are innocent then (at least in an ideal world) they won’t get as far as asset seizure and/or prosecution.
And in this case, it wasn’t even the police asking the questions, making this objection even more off-base.
It is AML and just about every nation in the world does it.
Every bank has to do it. They have no choice. The fines can be Billions and the Officers can go to jail.
Probably not. Routine cash transactions over $10K are usually handled automatically, a CTR would be generated automatically.
No human ever reviews it.