I learned a lot by asking and reading your answers. I didn’t even know structuring existed or what it meant until I read about it recently. Thank you everybody for participating! I wasn’t interested in the law as much as what the reality is. I’m not here to debate.
Bangs head on desk slowly. *
Ok, if you were depositing the funds to your account, then no, they likely didn’t check what you filled out for a SSN, as since they have your account info, the form is autofilled with your name, ssn , address and such like you have on your account of record.
If you give them the wrong ssn, two thing could occur- they may credit those funds to that persons account, instead of yours, or they could file a SAR based upon the fact you are trying to give false info.
You are not fooling anyone.
The average teller transaction is supposed to be as quick as possible. If you spend several minutes verifying identity beyond photo ID matching account, your bosses will not be happy with your slowness. An SSN verification would almost certainly never happen at the teller window. The only customers with SSN problems (missing, wrong, etc.) tended to be those who opened their accounts decades ago, and thus unlikely to be going for any nefarious purpose.
when some online sportsbook operators were busted a few yrs back, sports illustrated explained how they were involved in money laundering
it’s simple: say i’m a drug dealer or smuggler or hit man or whatever, and i’ve got $100,000 in cash I’ve earned illegally…I don’t want to just stuff it into my mattress because a)it won’t earn any interest and b)if i buy a car and pay $50K in cash for it that will look very suspicious and authorities might be notified
i want the money to be able to be legally accounted for…i’ll pay taxes on it…then i can deposit it in a bank or any other finacial instrument and can buy the expensive car and pay by check or credit card
so here’s what I do: it’s the superbowl, i send 50k to sportsbook A to bet on the giants, and I send 50k to sportsbook B to bet on the pats…whatever happens in the game, i will lose the 50k at one book but will win 50k at the other, plus get my 50k original bet back…so i will get a check for $100,000 from the sportsbook or its bank, then i deposit it in my bank, i have legally earned the money gambling (its not illegal to bet offshore) and if i pay taxes i’m in the clear, because i can explain where it came from and i paid taxes
…yes i know theres a vig on bets consider that the fee to clean the money
;):dubious::(:D;):p:rolleyes:
)
:eek:
anyone ever launder any dough this way?:):eek::mad::rolleyes:
OK. So how do you send $100k in the cash to the sportsbooks without first depositing it in a bank, at which point it will be reported? Even if you want to personally transport or mail it out of the country, you are required to report taking $10k or more in cash out of the country.
many ways; stuff the cash into one or several fedexs, wire it in increments western union, buy multiple money orders from post office or seven to eleven or anywhere that sells em
All of that is Structuring, again, a crime in itself.
If you buy a car for $50,000 cash, then the dealer deposits $50,000 cash (or commits structuring) and in their deposit report for the cash, report that it came from you. Ditto the real estate agent you pay rent or down payment to, etc. Eventually your name will be tied to the mone, unless nothing in your life costs close to $10,000.
It goes the other way too - if the police have a reason to investigate you, they will ask the Ferrari dealer how you paid for your nice red sports car. If the dealer says $5,000 down and $5,000 a month, cash - maybe they can’t nail you for structuring, but they certainly CAN start asking where the hard cash is coming form.
Ferrari and Porsche dealers depositing large sums of money are probably prime targets for investigation followup.
if i send money to a sportsbook in small amounts thats not against the law…its just a safety measure in case a package gets lost or stolen u wont lose everything
Untrue. At my brokerage I am required to do all of these things. Any new accounts require a SS# and if there’s a discrepancy we need to resolve it prior to any activity (other than initial deposit) in the account.
Similarly, I am required to report anything that looks like an attempt to avoid ‘suspicious activity’ flags. That specific item, depositing multiple $9900 items, is mentioned in the directives I receive.
You friend may be ‘an employee’ but I’m the broker at my place. It’s my ass on the line. He may not care but I guarantee that somewhere there’s a compliance officer with systems that look for patterns that are suspicious.
You’re right. But he may be right in a way. See when you do have a cash trans over $10K, some banks have the transactor fill out a form. But as soon as they notice that it’s a account holder, they just plug in the account number, and the form is autofilled. Thus the paper form that the depositor has filled out is ignored. Only if you don’t have a account there is that info actually used.
So, sure, if you walked in the bank with $15000, and the teller handed you a form, you could likely put a fake SSN on that form- which is going to be ignored and shredded anyway, once the computer the teller is on matches you to a accountholder.
New account do require a ssn, and all financial institutions will match the ssn give with the name etc on some service like Lexis. If there is a discrepency they will often freeze the account until that is fixed. Mind you if the disceipency looks like a simply typo, they may just fix that for the client.
So, no you can’t open a account with a fake ssn.
oh
This sounds like a terrible way to launder money. Even if you can get the money to the sportsbook without raising any flags, you still have to explain where the winning $50 000 bet came from.
You don’t turn $100K of dirty money into $100K of clean money. You do something like partner up with someone who has a (or start your own) business where you can do a lot of small cash transactions, pay the appropriate sales and income tax, spread it out over the course of a year or so, and come up with ~$60K of verifiable income with a paper trail. It’s a lot more effort, but nobody launders money just once. You would own several such businesses, and it would be an ongoing thing, for years at a time.
This is why organized crime is often rumoured to be fronting restaurants and pizza places, vending machine chains, etc. - businesses that are hard to track and take in lots of small untraceable cash. You can dump a few thousand into the day’s take, each day, and unless someone does a serous survey of your business’s performance, how ill they know? If they want to track,say, how many cases of soft drinks your vending machines sold - then you buy the right number of cases, and sell the excess to small grocery stores for cash. If there’s a question, there’s an answer…
But basically, real money laundering is a job in and of itself, making life harder the less of an organization you have.
I have a friend you worked in the IRS.
A typical way of laundering money is to open up a business and claim to make a TON of money doing it. Claim the income on your taxes.
Presto…legit.
Where my friend got involved is some of them wanted to do this and then not pay taxes…
One particularly bugged him. It was a small shop that rented golf balls and a club to go out back (only room for one) and hit golf balls into a wooden fence a few feet away.
Revenue - $6,000,000 a year.
I can’t necessarily say that you’re wrong. But for my shop such things are gathered and reported automatically. We are almost paperless (and might be there in a few years) and if I or my assistant deposits a check above the line it generates the report against the account holders name.