cbn42

It says intent to evade reporting requirements, not intent to commit any other crime. As long as you break up your deposits to evade reporting requirements, you are guilty of structuring. It doesn't matter if your deposits are completely legal. That is the point I am trying to make. Structuring is a crime in and of itself, which means that you can be guilty of structuring even if your money is clean. If you are accused of structuring, proving that your money was legitimate by showing your MS paper trail will not get you out of it.

Banks are required to report all suspicious transactions. There are special requirements for some types of transactions, such as cash, but there are also general laws requiring anything arousing suspicion to be reported. Structuring includes apparent attempts to circumvent any of these reports, not just those concerning cash.

Airbridge

What a quaint even if totally misguided thought

grayland

It is obvious by this, and the other discussions on this subject, that it is all just a guess until someone gets charged and reports it here.

As far as I know...it has not happened to a FT member for MO deposit.

Lobachevsky

Again, there are no reports required for depositing any amounts of money orders, so depositing money orders in any particular quantity is not an effort to circumvent any reports.

See:
http://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/irm_04-026-013.html

There are no CTR requirements for non-cash transactions. Period. If there are no reporting requirements, there is no way what you do can be construed to be done to avoid reporting requirements. Period.

CTR=CURRENCY Transaction Report

As for the old news article cited, obviously it doesn't apply--it was about someone converting cash into money orders to avoid reporting requirements. That isn't what manufactured spending does. There's no cash involved in what's described in this topic.

cbn42

Here is an excerpt from FFIEC's AML manual: In addition, structuring may occur before a customer brings the funds to a bank. In these instances, a bank may be able to identify the aftermath of structuring. Deposits of monetary instruments that may have been purchased elsewhere might be structured to evade the CTR filing requirements or the recordkeeping requirements for the currency purchase of monetary instruments. This clearly implies than banks are supposed to report this type of activity as the "aftermath" of suspected structuring.

MsArbi

Deleted.

Andy2

Exactly. The training manuals at banks make the assumption that the person depositing several money orders of $1,000 each must gave known that depositing that much cash would have caused the bank to do paperwork, so that depositor chose to convert the cash to money orders in order to avoid the paperwork, which calls for a suspicious activity report regardless of whether the money orders themselves are problematic. We just need more MS examples in the guidance that the government provides to financial organizations and in god bank training manuals so they understand that nothing suspicious is happening. But we all know that will never happen.

Lobachevsky

The question was whether banks file CTRs for money order deposits--and I repeat once again that they don't. There are no such requirements. The conversation then shifted to whether banks might view money order deposits as something suspicious that could require an SAR. The answer is of course--anything you do might cause someone somewhere to file an SAR. I've had hundreds of SARs filed, some that I've filled out myself (even though you're never supposed to even know that an SAR is being filed against you). I've had them filed for too many wire transfers, large deposits of dollar coins, depositing such coins twice in the same branch in the same day (I got a shipment in the afternoon so deposited a second time after my morning deposit).

To my knowledge, none of those SARs produced any followups whatever. I've never been audited, never been visited by any authority, never even been questioned about what I was doing except for some idle conversation by a bank teller.

MS is not money laundering. We are NOT terrorists, drug dealers, or an organized crime family. We are doing nothing illegal, unethical, or dishonest.

Stop worrying, pocket your profits, and carry on. If you get AA from a bank, go to another bank. There are plenty of banks.

xp0

n/m -- replied based on mis-reading a post.

prasha11

MO deposits is a link/step to complete MSing, If MO deposits is structuring and structuring is crime, MSing is a crime?

Stoughton

MO deposits are NOT a crime. How many times does this need to be said?

AnalystGuy

Unless you have access to the SAR database I am 100% certain that you are not aware of "hundreds of SARs" filed. You may be mistaking other types of paperwork for a SAR. Unauthorized disclosure of SAR is a federal offense that the government takes very seriously.

And if an individual did have that many SARs filed, I can pretty much guarantee you there would be several visits from various three letter agencies.

AnalystGuy

No. Absolutely not. However, the activities that are part of MS can appear to be suspicious. I am not personally aware of anyone getting into trouble over MS (bank closures excepted) but it is something that has to be accounted for. The IRS often seizes first and asks questions later.

Lobachevsky

Nonsense.

There are about a million SARs filed every year. See:
http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/rp/f...by_numb_17.pdf

The IRS has about 15,000 revenue agents in the entire country. Do you really think there are many available to handle a million SAR reports EVERY SINGLE YEAR?

These days SAR reports have to be filed electronically, but you can still see the old forms, for example here:
https://www.pdffiller.com/en/project...orm_id=1649807

I've been asked to fill out that form myself a few times because the people who wanted it from me didn't know my SS# or DL#. OK "hundreds of forms" was a rhetorical exaggeration. I'm guessing that for each form I actually know about there must be ten I don't know about. I doubt that many of these forms are really submitted--they're filed or faxed somewhere and then someone else makes the decision about whether to submit them or not.

Look at the form and the "suspicious activities" in section 19. I don't do any of them. You shouldn't either. Simply depositing lots of money orders isn't one of them. There is no reason for an SAR just for doing that.

If you say that the money orders MAY have been paid for in cash and deposited to avoid the cash/currency reporting requirements, I'll agree--but in that case it's the responsibility of the organization that took the cash and sold the money orders to issue the reports, not the bank receiving the money orders.

It's pretty obvious that when I show up with a few dozen MOs purchased from the Wal-Mart across the street from the bank branch that I'm not hiding anything--especially when I do it every day. My deposits are almost always over $10K per deposit. There's no attempt to avoid reports or limits. It's obvious to anyone concerned about such things that there's nothing like that going on.

You quote a section of a manual saying such deposits MAY indicate laundering or structuring--well, sure. That's why some banks hate money orders and will close accounts for depositing them. That action avoids the questions and any worries, even if it does treat the depositor unfairly. No way to avoid that.

Just remember that there are plenty of banks.

AnalystGuy

Do you think SARs are only reviewed by IRS agents? There are several federal agencies that have SAR review teams. Additionally, state and other law enforcement entities are able to look at them.

Any behavior can be considered suspicious under the "no apparent lawful purpose" criteria. And your FI won't be asking you for any information...they already have it all on file.

Are you really maintaining that you deposit over 10k in MOs into a consumer account each day?