The money laundering arm is looking for people depositing hard cash in large amounts. A cheque or similar is for transfering electrons from one bank to another. It may trigger something with the IRS, but the money-laundering people don’t care about domestic bank-to-bank transfers unless it seems like a way to aggregate cash into legitimate bank deposits.
The other problem with cheques that makes banks wait a long time - see the movie “Catch Me If You Can”. Even in the 50’s some crooks figured out a way to create cheques that did not get flagged as nvalid until after they had been in process for a few weeks. There was a scam going around about 5 to 10 years ago, where someone bought something, say on Ebay, then badly over-paid with a cashier’s cheque or othe legit-seeming instrument. They asked you to send them the excess in cash, or cashier’s cheque, or whatever.
These cheques passed the first round of validation, but when they were actually processed by the “issuing” bank, they were frauds. I recall at least one case where the recipient asked the bank several times if it was legit, was told it was. When they finally disallowed it, he sued, and won because he had received assurances from the bank and had proceeded on their advice.
So odds are the delay was the bank was covering it’s assets, not calling the IRS.
So then… if let’s say you sold your house or business, how would the IRS ever know that there was a tax to be collected.
Former programmer here who has worked for different banks and financial institutions. No, you can not skirt reporting laws by splitting your transactions into amounts that come in just under the limit. I’ve worked on reports that listed all transactions over, I believe it was $7,000 (it’s been a few years, I don’t remember the exact amount). Upon receiving these reports, someone will check your transaction history. Oh, and I believe I’ve also been told that transactions Totaling x amount In x number of months will trigger reports and investigations. There is no way that I am aware of to get around federal reporting laws. And if this is legit, why are you trying to? Depositing large amounts of money is not illegal, the IRS just wants to make sure it has a legit source.
It is true that historically, the SSN for banks and many other institutions was just an “arbitrary” unique field identifier in their database, and so they didn’t have to care whether it was yours or not as long as no one else in their system had the same number. That’s because that wasn’t the original purpose of the SSN. So many institutions have been “catching up.”
When I first opened a Wells Fargo account at the age of 18 one of the digits in my SSN was mistakenly transposed. I didn’t say anything, just curious to see what would happen. Once I started to use the account a lot, they sent me a letter telling me to come in with photo ID and Social Security card to confirm what the actual number was. But the mistaken number was either the number of a completely different person, or one that didn’t exist at all.
Well, if you have $250k and are heading to the bank with I would drive VERY CAREFULLY. If the cops pull you over and see you have a large amount of cash, they will take it. Doesn’t matter if that cash is 100% legal, you have it and they want it. Police have a great racket going:
1: Pull someone over with a bit of money on them’
2: Declare said money illegal, just because you can and confiscate
There sure is. It’s called the IRS. Since there is a SSN attached to all your transactions, all institutions, it’s easy-peasy for the IRS to add those up.
I’ve read quite a bit about this, and one of the ways money launderers work is to bribe bank tellers or to put their own people in place. You can’t pass a structured audit, but key people in the bank will overlook it and should it ever come to light the launderer is long gone and they can pass it off as a one time error.
Usually when you see how launderers get caught it involves putting their own people in, or paying someone at the bank off
NO! Look, if you deposit over $10000, the bank will fill out a CTR. It’s no biggie. No one looks at a CTR, it doesn’t call out the hounds or anything. IF you get audited for another issue, it will show up sure, and if you are under investigation for other crimes, they will find it. But for 99.99% of CTR, no one knows or cares. It does not trigger a audit. As long as your source is legal, and you are not under investigation for any crimes, just deposit the cash- all at once. Or, Ok if you already have two accounts at different bank, not so bad to split it between them, sure. There are ways to see if you split $200K between 21 banks.
The IRS does not track transactions, unless you are already under audit.
But if you deposit multiple cash transactions under the $10000 limit, this is called “structuring” and it is a federal Crime in itself. The Bank will file a SAR, which will be looked at by the FBI, IRS, etc, which may trigger a audit etc.
Actually the clearinghouse is FINCEN, not the IRS per se.
I am guessing: Matrícula Consular. We took them, I am sure most US banks do, too. They are valid in the same way that a Belgian passport is a valid form of photo ID.
My one SAR I filed went like this: grumpy old man tried to put >$10k in. I started to ask the CTR questions, he groused and asked to deposit something like $9,900. I agreed and finished his transaction. As soon as he left, I closed my window and filed a SAR based upon his info and what I knew about the transaction. I don’t know if he was doing anything illegal, but it is a requirement that I do the SAR anyway.
Some customers also did daily CTRs. They ran large cash businesses, so it was no big deal.
There is also the Monetary Instrument Log, which you must file when a customer buys >$3000 worth of money orders or cashier’s/official checks.
I know the Canadian Social Insyurance Number (9 digits) the 9th digit is a checksum. IIRC the algorithm was something like sum of odd digits plus tow times sum of even digits, use the final digit of that total. This means that if you made up some random number or transposed a pair(most common mistake) you only had a 1 in10 chance of the SIN passing the first validity test. Then it could be identity-checked.
I assume SSN’s have a similar transposition-prevention checksum?
If someone else has an account in their SSN and fail to declare even the miserly interest income, odds are sooner or later it sets off red flags. After all, the bank probably sends in declarations to the IRS of SSN and interest paid; the IRS then verifies this was entered onto the SSN’s income tax statement. At least, that’s how it works in Canada. Why do you think they wanted the SSN to open an account?
Nope. SSN is 29 years older than SIN, maybe they didn’t think about it then. The first three digits tell you where the person was born/registered, and roughly when they were born because the middle digits are assigned in a certain order. The last four are serial.
There is so much misinformation out there. Even in this thead. There is so much you can get away with at a large institution. It may change every year, so you never know. I agree with the posters who said that SSN’s are not always checked. That has been my experience more often than not, as recently as last year!
If you already know the answer to your “question” why did you post this in GQ? It appears you are more interested in debating the subject of money laundering and structuring versus finding a factual answer like the ones provided by the people in this thread.
