Stoughton

Still believe in the Easter Bunny too?

tymothy

No, and I don't believe in the Boogie Man either. Stop wetting your pants over silly stuff like this.

Law enforcement doesn't care that you're buying MOs to get credit card rewards. If you aren't evading taxes, selling drugs,doing insider trading or anything else illegal, they aren't going to prosecute you. If they investigate, it'd be pretty simple to follow the paper trail and see that all the money orders you're depositing are going to pay off your credit cards which are in turn making large individual purchases at a few stores--and the enormous amounts of rewards you get. If anything, the activity some MSers are doing- setting up multiple bank accounts, making smaller deposits, spaced out, are actually MORE suspicious and consistent with an attempt to avoid reporting and accounting requirements.

Now sure, you run a reasonable risk that a bank won't want your business anymore because of the frequent reports it has to file and may decide to close your account to be on the safe side. But getting arrested is absolutely absurd. Grow up and stop thinking the scary bad men are going to take you away for being tricky with a credit card company.

cbn42

No it doesn't. Structuring is a crime per se, meaning that it is illegal on its own regardless of intent. If you break up deposits to avoid reporting requirements, you are guilty of structuring, regardless of whether what you are doing is otherwise legal. I don't know of anyone being prosecuted for that, but the law is there.

tuphat

You are flat out wrong, intent matters in this case, it even says so right in the name of the applicable statute:

31 U.S. Code § 5324 - Structuring transactions to evade reporting requirement prohibited

MsArbi

Deleted.

deant

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Also, if you were doing deposits that would appear to be structuring, I think it could be assumed that you were splitting up the deposits because of the law. Why else would you break them up that way?

3ZeroT

I'm not aware of any reporting requirements (to evade) for MO deposits, are you? It would be different if these were cash transactions.

Stoughton

I don't think that'll happen, but for anyone to think, even for a moment, that "you can't be convicted unless there's sufficient evidence you committed of a crime" is beyond naïve.

Stoughton

FinCen/IRS 8300? Wouldn't apply to what we're doing but I can see how, under certain circumstance, someone would want to avoid it

brero

The thing is (and I don't do a whole lot of MOs) I never have $10K worth of MOs on any given day, so if I just deposit what I have obtained on that particular day on the same day (no matter what bank I deposit the entire day's worth into) that's not form avoidance, that's simply convenience/risk mitigation for loss.

PaulMSN

It is not ignorance of the law, so no excuses are necessary. To convict you, they would have to prove intent. If the intent is not there, there is no structuring. "Appears to be" is not sufficient in a court of law.

Why break them up? To avoid carrying large amounts of MOs at one time. That's the main reason why I only deposit $2000 or less.

This is saying nothing about the IRS' heavy-handed attempts to confiscate money. That is another matter, but it is very rare, I think.

3ZeroT

I believe 8300 only applies to money exchanged in a retail sale (payment to a business). There is a FinCen CTR however with a $10k reporting requirement but I believe it only applies to cash deposits, perhaps someone can chime in. If so then arguably there is no structuring with MO deposits.

Stoughton

Yes, the CTR is only cash/coin

Lobachevsky

Money orders are checks. They're not cash or currency. They do not fall under any reporting requirements. There are no tax forms to fill out when you deposit money orders regardless of the amounts. So there can't be any justified accusation of structuring if that's what you're depositing.

You can't prevent tellers/bankers from being ignorant of the facts, confused about the rules, worried about their jobs, eager to avoid hassles from their superiors, or on a power trip. But the worst thing that can happen is that your deposit account will be closed--and usually you're given 30 days notice for that. As for confiscations/law suits/inability to recover the funds--I've never even heard of that happening for simply depositing money orders. If anyone here or elsewhere says otherwise, I call BS and ask for some proof. (No, I'm not saying I'm perfect and know everything either. But I read a lot in a lot of places and am pretty darn sure I'm right about this.)

Andy2

http://bangordailynews.com/2012/10/1...-transactions/

Here is the problem a person faces by believing that the deposit of money orders do not matter since they may be exempt from CTRs. There is plenty of guidance that instructs the recipients of monetary instruments (which includes checks and money orders) to consider filing suspicious activity reports if they receive numerous monetary instruments of similar amounts, particularly if they are in sequential order. The idea is that these SARs will catch those who used cash to purchase money orders in an attempt to avoid information reporting, which is what happened to the guy in the article. I realize that the burden would logically fall upon the seller of money orders to do the reporting, but the obligation to consider filing SARs is very broad.

I realize that the money orders that are purchased at WalMart are not purchased with cash, but the bank that might file a SAR after receiving the money orders does not know that. And if enough banks file SARs, someone might have to show an examiner that the money orders were not purchased with cash and explain the miles game to the examiner. This is a much worse situation if the bank has frozen the account while the investigation occurs because the government is considering an account seizure.

I am not trying to be an alarmist. The WalMart money orders are not purchased with cash and there is an extremely valid reason that most of the purchases of money orders at WalMart are for $2,000 - the machine only allows four swipes of the beloved $500 cards per transaction. Even when a true debit card is used, most debit cards have a daily limit of between $1,000 and $2,500. And many MSers simply place a limit on the amount of money orders and gift cards they feel comfortable carrying around at a time (particularly in plain sight of potential thieves in the money center at WalMart who might follow the person in the parking lot).

But I think to say that money orders have no risk when it comes to SARs and structuring is not accurate.