How are you paying for these MOs?

ST debit card.

Nice. SAR reporting is in hyper growth mode.

I am sure that has pro's and con's. For example, when these money orders come into your bank(s), anyone will be able to see that they were purchased as "small buys" (as they will be non sequential).

You might be right that you are shifting AA from the CSM/ lower store management to somewhere else. I'd prob agree with that.

Of course, don't put too much weight on what I say as I have very little idea as most people on here.

Edit: Also, for all we know, it could be good to have Walmart file paperwork with Fincen. That might be something that benefits you as opposed to these deposits showing up in your bank account out of "no where."

My comment was solely for WM. It seems like AA will come up in the store very quickly if someone is buying multiple MOs in one sitting. And as for "small buys", the bank will not know the difference between buying them in 1 transaction vs 2. You are still doing the same number of MOs but just separately.

Catch 22
 

I like the note at the bottom of the excel file stating that if you can't open the document, you can download the viewer software. Not sure how you'd see the note if you can't open the document.

What, you don't have the Excel note viewer software on your computer?

Ok, I hear you now. I misunderstood initially.

The cashier at WM today says to me " I know what you want I just need to know how many" he then volunteered that he has several folks who come in to purchase MO in volume. I then asked him what the limit is, he responded $20,000 a day on debit however anything over $10,000 purchased with cash requires CTF forms. So it seems they are not so concerned with MO purchased by debit, currency is the primary concern not currency equivalents:p

At the Monona, WI WM that used to allow MO purchase with debit cards, the limit was $2000 a day, but several cashiers allowed more. Now they've stopped altogether, although they still allow you to load BB with debits. The Madison East Side store only allows $2000 a day, and they keep to that.

The Watertown store was strict on $2000 max and stopped allowing purchases altogether a few weeks ago. The Delafield, Wisconsin store allows up to $6000 without a form and up to $10,000 with a form, but the cashier who is usually there has gotten squeamish about it -- I'm not sure if it will last much longer.

So in the Madison area it's all over the map, and the opportunities are disappearing slowly. It's gotten to be too much trouble because of distances, so I'll probably drop back to CC bonuses and Redcard. I have way more miles than I have time for trips, anyway.

I have about 4 or 5 cashiers that see me on a regular basis that just ask me how many I want when I get up to their register. I've asked them before if there are others that buy that many MO and they didn't see anyone else doing it. I typically limit my transactions at 8. I think I tried 9 one time and it wouldn't go through so I just do 8 max.

So the error with the picture above must have been a fluke. I went this morning and got 8 no problem.

Growth profile matches my own MS activities almost perfectly. Big ramp in late 2012/early 2013 due to VRs and then exploding with introduction of pins for vgc in April 2013. Then fairly steady thru Autumn 2014 when WMs started clamping down and CVS vgc no longer worked. Extend that chart another 6 months to today and I'd expect rather steady decline in SARs. Still would expect to be much higher than pre-pins as some WM still accept vgc and ever-more people get in the MSMS game.

But the data shows it's vgc pins (and probably MSing) that caused a big spike in SARs. Shows that despite all the SARs, we haven't seen anyone charged for Structuring (as it would be a ridiculous overreach for somebody who merely does MS - particularly since Big Brother sees all your financial data in real time, it is simple to track your MS recycling efforts). That all this tracking is supposedly done to "protect us from terrorism", next thing we'll all be required to have anal probes to deposit a MO. Because we are the home of the brave and land of the free...

farwest101 - do you really think MS activity caused such a huge spike in SARs? Really?

That report mentions FinCEN Form 111 which is the new electronic form that must be filed. Everyone was supposed to be filing electronically by July 1, 2012, but obviously that didn't happen. IMO, it took some time to implement the electronic filing part although it was available earlier.

There are some knowledgeable people on here when it comes to MS, but I always laugh at some of the responses to Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) issues. MS did not cause a huge spike in SARs. Structuring is the biggest reason a SAR is filed and if you are MSing, you shouldn't be dealing in enough cash to appear to be structuring. I don't at least.

You got that wrong. One shouldn't be purposely making transactions just under the limit in regards to structuring. I for one, have no problem depositing MOs over $10k to avoid any of those issues.