BofA card = free miles? Think Again
 

Gimme an M!
Gimme an S!
Gimme an A!
Gimme an R!

WHAT'S THAT SPELL?

Most likely, you have no idea.

But if you're buying BIG money orders at WalMart or the Post Office to get miles on your debit card, it's time you learned. It's a Money Services Activity Report, to be filled out by the "associate" (employee) for certain suspicious characters like yourself.

The form has three parts. Part I, "Customer information" -- name, address, SS#, etc. Part II (my favorite) is "Customer Activity". This is the part where the minimum wage clerk becomes duly deputized by your Federal government to investigate and report your "activities". Owing to the expected lack of training provided by retailers in this regard, your Federal government has helpfully provided some suggestions, each with a check box, including:

* Two or more persons purchasing items in an attempt to circumvent the $10,000 reporting requirement

* Presenting false identification

* Frequently making purchases of less than $3000

This last one is certainly a potential problem for anyone trying to purchase the maximum $2500/day in MO's.

As per norm with such forms, there are no instructions as to when it is to be filled out or by whom. Like a CTR or SARC (Suspicious Activity Report Casino), the vague guidelines will be left up to the Solomon-like judgment of minimum wage clerks. And they will not be allowed to tell you when or why they are filling it out. And then you'll be on The Master List.

I guess I was lucky the first time I went into WalMart. This was before Xmas, when the Customer Service counter was busy and stocked with reps. I asked for MO's totalling $2500, paid with my debit card, signed, and was out the door in no time. The second time, a manager had the clerk fill out a transaction log, explaining that it was supposed to be done for BIG money orders (over $500, I think).

But today was the piece de resistance. There was only one clerk at the counter, and her main function appeared to be redirecting people with returns to another counter. When she got through yapping with her pal on the phone, and I said the words "money order", the gum-snapping fatty immediately reached for the phone, calling a manager. The manager finally came, but her face contorted like Jamie Lee Curtis' in Halloween when I told her how much I wanted. She too started reaching for the phone. Didn't she know how to do money orders either? "Yes, but I've never done a BIG one." That's when she got out THE BOOK, containing the MSAR form. "There's two forms here, which do I fill out?" No one knew.

"Thanks, anyway," I said, and left.

Appealing as the prospect of getting 100K Alaska miles for a little shoe leather is, it's not worth being tagged a drug dealer/terrorist/money launderer and put on The Master List.

Just think of it: actual government employees were paid to dream up and design this form. Tens, maybe hundreds. They had meetings, they drank bad coffee, they went back to their desks, they loosened their polyester ties, they had more meetings. This went on for months.

Then they had a new project: distributing the new form and writing guidelines and rules for its use. Real live, breathing human beings did this. "Honey," one said, loosening his polyester tie, "I wish you could see what's been keeping me late at the office all year. It's truly going to make the world a better place."

Your tax dollars at work.

[This message has been edited by Bidkat (edited 12-31-2002).]

I thought walmart doesnt accept
debit cards for money orders?
Do they?

Also if you pay your bills using
a money order, instead of writing
a check, how could that be construed as
money laundering. In fact, you are paying
money to the post office(federal
institution) in the form of fees for
a money order. So the govt should be
happy:-)

Interesting. But the lesson to be learned from this story is to keep your transactions small, regardless of the urge to earn your 100,000 Alaska Airlines miles as soon as possible.
Maybe just buy a $750 money order at WalMart one week, the post office the next week, and Albertsons the next. Also, buy money orders for some of your regular large expenses, like your mortgage, rent, property taxes, or insurance.
As far as the Government coming after you, nothing you've done is against the law. There is nothing illegal about buying a $2,500 money order on your B of A debit card at WalMart, and then depositing it back into your checking account. Whether you'll have to explain that at a jury trial, I don't know.
But buying money orders is a far stretch from it having to do with drug dealing. I don't think the street drug dealers in my town are now accepting money orders for payments. It's still a cash business.

You don't sign when you pay via debit. You enter your PIN.

If your debit card has a MasterCard or Visa logo, you can do either. Many FF programs will NOT give you miles if you use your PIN.

------------------
Vasant

You are right. However, this thread is in reply to this one:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/007973.html

It talks about using a B of A Debit card to earn miles. This card gives miles for PIN based transactions. The thread was about using the card to buy money orders. You can only purchase them with the debit feature and not the credit feature.

I have tried 4 walmart stores in Kansas City and none of them will allow you to use your debit card for money orders but I am still doing the post office I have just started so I hope this works....

Although I understand your frustration, the purpose of these laws is to stop or slow money laundering. Money laundering is performed by people making repeated transactions changing money from a trackable form (debit card) to a bearer instrument (money order) at amounts just below the reportable transaction limits. It makes sense to investigate anyone who makes numerous transactions which fit into the above parameters. Those govt employees were told by their supervisors to come up with a way to slow down money laundering, and they came up with the only practical method. If you have a better way, I'm sure they would be happy to hear it. Its easy to bash faceless govt employees, but try to put yourself in their shoes every now and then and realize that most are doing their job, as assigned by the politicians we elected, to the best of their ability. I'm sure as a writer you could actually go spend a couple weeks observing these employees so you can see what they really do, then report back to us if they are really as stupid as you seem to think they are.

sorry for the edit.

Don't get me wrong ... I see nothing wrong in taking advantage of the loopholes the system offers.

But this kind of abuse (rather than the subtler kind http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif) will cause more restrictions which will eventually hurt all of us.

------------------
Vasant

Aside from the merits of the concept, which have been debated above and surely will be debated more below, can someone explain to me how "Form" creates an "R" in the acronym?

[This message has been edited by Ken in Phx (edited 12-28-2002).]

Burgerwars wrote:
Do it enough times, and you're probably wrong.

The US Department of Treasury defines smurfing as follows:
Does this sound familiar at all?

For an interesting summary of the National Drug Intelligence Center's take on money laundering, see:

National Drug Threat Assessment 2001 - The Domestic Perspective or

The 2001 National Money Laundering Strategy

Greg

To be guilty of money laundering, you must be laundering a fraudulent activity. If there is no fraudulent activity ie Drugs, guns, identity theft then there is no crime or problem. Moving money from one account that has your name to another for the purpose of paying bills or spending said funds is neither laundering or criminal. However, I find the threats by some posters here to be laughable in their attempts to scare others from earning miles in a way that is creative and fresh. Such animosity for those who dont follow the crowd. Glad we live in the U.S.A. !!!!

Sure, you might not be GUILTY. But, if your name gets added to some list, then you are open to all kinds of problems for a long time. The list might note you as a POTENTIAL crook. But, the list also contains lots of real badguys, that just have not been nailed yet. Sort of like someone reporting you as a sex offender. You can be totally innocent, and even get the police or courts to issue a statement, but too late, you have been branded.

Bottom line, like the current security foolishness at airports, the gov't gets your name on a list for seemingly innocent reasons, then what is next?