What exactly is the violation of BSA? And what reporting requirement would someone be trying to avoid by depositing MOs?

How is that any(let alone clear) violation of the Bank Secrecy Act ?

If persons following this thread need to read about Dennis Hastert to know not to lie to the FBI, then they can read about it on CNN.

The title of the thread specifically concerns money orders, not cash.

Correct, insofar as it goes. It's a felony to handle your legally obtained money in a way that avoids reporting requirements. You don't have to be involved in any specified unlawful activity. Thank you Congress for keeping us safe!

I think you mean CTRs. SARs are a different animal entirely and the "trigger" that causes one to be filed is entirely subjective. See: SAR Quick Reference Guide

"Suspicious activity is any conducted or attempted transaction or pattern of transactions that you know, suspect or have reason to suspect meets any of the following conditions: 1 Involves money from criminal activity. 2 Is designed to evade Bank Secrecy Act requirements, whether through structuring or other means. 3 Appears to serve no business or other legal purpose and for which available facts provide no reasonable explanation."

This is why I am not cagey with bank tellers (pun intended).

Actually, using multiple banks is the sort of thing that gets SAR's filed. Remember, they can be filed by back offices. See above.

Yes, they might. See the case of Terry and Sandy Dehko which, after great expense and heartache, ended happily.

However, in my opinion, all of this is moot so long as one is not dealing with currency. According to FinCen, there is no reporting requirement for the purchase of, or deposit of, money orders that are not purchased with currency. You cannot evade a CTR that is not required.

First of all, many thanks for a great post!

LOL

I do think it's worthy of noting at all appropriate opportunities, if only so that it might one day change.

You're right, of course. I did mean CTR's. Trying to avoid CTR's is probably what led to SAR's filed by Mr. Hastert's bank and his subsequent interrogation by the FBI.

Note that there's a distinction between banks and branches. In the case of those I know, they're aware that branches will look at deposits across multiple locations. So, the people I know specifically use multiple *banks*, which, to my knowledge, aren't aware of each others' deposits.

Certainly a valid point about branches, though!



I always like to see more articles and hear more opinions on this topic, so thank you again for your post! :) I tend to agree with your assessment, actually. However, I'm not sure that a prosecutor or judge or jury would agree, and their opinions are the ones that ultimately matter.

So I bought about $20,000 worth of MO's and deposited them all into my online bank Bank of Internet a few weeks back. I deposited them all by mobile check deposit. They all cleared the bank and I began to bill pay all the MO's out to the credit cards I had to pay off. I then got a call about a week later from a 800 number and when I answered it turned out to be a CSR from Bank of Internet. She wanted to confirm some "unusual activity" on my account. Immediately I panicked since I hadn't thought of a legitimate reason for all of the MO deposits and subsequent sending out to pay off credit cards. So at first I kind of dodged her questions and when she asked why there was so much money being withdrawn to bill pay various credit cards I just said I had some large credit card bills to pay down. And then she specifically pressed me on what exactly the money orders were and why there were so many of them. I had no idea what to say so I just said that I didn't want to get into it with her and that it was my own personal financial situation.

Looking back I wish I had some sort of an answer prepared for a situation like this or at least spread out my deposits.

However it has been over two weeks since that phone call and my account is operating as usual and I haven't heard anything else from the bank.

Anything to worry about here? Also, any suggestions for an alibi as to the questions that were asked if they were to come up again in the future?

Is it a risk to do MO's in a small amount? I am thinking of doing just $3-$5k of MO's per month ($1k each trip) at WM and then depositing into 2-3 different banks around town.

Sigh. As you are not doing anything illegal, you do not need an alibi. That said, the behavior described was objectively suspicious and quite possibly involved the filing of an SAR by the bank's back office. Instead of panicking and evading, why not simply explain the legitimate reason that you actually have? I.e., "I buy them to earn credit card points." The bank may still decide to sever their relationship with you, but that's always a risk.

Andyandy

Yes.

Andyandy

dude, it's your money. you can do whatever you want with it. You acted like you were a drug dealer.

Fair enough. Yeah I wish I had just been truthful but I didn't know what to say on the spot, the call threw me off guard. Ultimately if the bank decides to close my checking account I won't really care that much. Is severing a banking relationship with an individual bank the only risk or are there any other potential wider reaching risks?

I hate to say it, but look for a shutdown soon. I got shut down for depositing MOs and pinging cash back via square cash with my wife with UFB (BofI).

What was weird is that the envelope was addressed to me, but the letter inside was addressed to someone else. It said they would give me 30 days. I took all my money out and shut down my account myself so I wouldn't get a negative mark on Chexsystems.

The different banks part is the most dangerous one. Unless you have a legitimate reason to use multiple banks ("avoiding paperwork" is considered avoiding CTR's), then some people could interpret that to be structuring, which is a federal offense.

How can it be a federal offense if there is no reporting requirement ??

Please just stop as you are posting things that are just plain false. There is no reporting requirement for MO deposits. Do you even know what the C in CTR stands for? If you use CC to purchase GC to purchase MO there is never any cash involved. That means you never attempted to avoid a CTR which means you aren't attempting to structure. Therefore, there is no federal offense being broken.