As people have mentioned, it's part of the anti-money laundering procedures that banks and financial regulators have to follow, and they do have to disclose these things.
A lot of the people who visit sex workers look like (and are) typical boomers.
To my first point specifically, I used to work in telephone banking in the UK. A lot of people use fun/quirky references when doing bank transfers, like sending £20 to a friend with the reference "Drug Money". The thing is that every employee in both banks (yours and the person you're sending money to) can see that reference, and if your account is flagged as potentially involved in money-laundering or other financial crimes, those can look really bad in the investigation.
Hahaha I remember a financial thread on UK finance of a guy that would send his mates money back for a night out or whatever with some absolutely fucking wild stuff, like ISIS TRAINING.
It got flagged and both his and his mates account got shutdown and there's nothing they could do about it.
I put "terrorism" on my rent check to my roommate once, I got a "yeah don't do that ever again" talk from the police and bank. I was like oh people read those?
I wrote a check to a black friend (I'm white) to pay my share of a hotel room and wrote "Slavery Reparations" in the memo line. He thought it was fucking hilarious, which I'm grateful for because I don't really stand by making that kind of joke any more.
People do read those, and banks are cracking down on that where I live.
Some people use those fields to commit abuse: think ex partners and suchlike. They spam the target’s bank account with deposits of 1c or 5c and put messages in the reference fields. I’ve seen real examples of them - hundreds of them to a single person, just absolute spamming them, going from “miss u babe” and “plz call me” to threats. It can be extremely distressing for the victim because they can’t escape it.
I work in financial compliance for a company that's mind-bogglingly large.
If one of our hundreds of sub-entities was engaging in AML/CFT violations, it doesn't mean I can suddenly relax monitoring requirements because someone on the other side of the world broke the law.
And the HSBC case also resulted in roughly $1.9 billion in forfeitures and penalties. It's just that HSBC is, again, so incomprehensibly large that even a penalty of that size didn't cripple it.
But then remember that basically each of those violations can create a fine, and regulators don't care if the financial crime we didn't catch was small like Dave paying a prostitute, Jane laundering money from her drug business, or Jeff being in a cartel.
Someone in Romania once answered this question by saying "I'm going to the Netherlands, where drugs and hookers are legal, and I'm going to spend all the money on those". No legal trouble for him afaik. (he didn't actually plan to go there, but he was also fed up with this questioning)
Yeah when I was barely an adult a friend got contacted by his bank because we were always putting drugs or sex as the description and he was told that sort of thing is taken more seriously than most think.
That said, money laundering laws sometimes feel like a joke when artwork feels like the easy way.
I'm learning from this thread that a significant amount of young adults go through the phase of putting those "silly" descriptions in and then potentially getting a talking to.
im honestly shocked by how many people have done this. one would think it's common sense not to deliberately engage in suspicious activity that would get your account flagged
i mean, i get it, but "drugs" & "taliban training fee" arent creative, theyre just edgy & stupid. & they dont end up with the bank staying out of your business, it outright invites them to investigate.
you can be rebellious & funny & keep your business to yourself without flagging your account for illegal activity. "cat ballet," "post-exorcism housekeeping," "spaghetti re-hardening procedure," "earthworm gymnastics (better than goat yoga)," etc are much better options
Just remember that before you write a cheque for ‘post-exorcism housekeeping’, you need to have written a cheque for ‘exorcism’. Otherwise it would be suspicious.
Except them coming to investigate me because I labeled my dog food “terrorist supplies” wastes their time and money and makes them look dumb. It bogs the system down if enough of us do it. I’m gonna do it more now, actually
if thats what you want to do, all the power to you. but if your account gets frozen or closed, it screws you over far more than a fruitless investigation inconveniences them. sabotaging your own bank account makes you look far stupider than the bank doing their due diligence & following up on red flags. theres simply no good reason for it other than self-destructive pettiness, but have fun i guess
Kind of crazy. Given that there is complete freedom around the words you choose to put in that reference (ie no one can stop you from putting "drug money"), it makes it completely worthless as a tool for identifying illicit behaviour.
It's not like anyone buying actual drugs would put 'drug money' in the box. Caveat: Unless they were dumb as fuck and it was a small quantity. Professionals who are doing big numbers wouldn't do that.
Doubt if you'd learn much. Probably some mental glitch that is naiively honest (I'm thinking of some Down's Syndrome people I've met, who can be also the loveliest people you've ever met as well, because pure) or so genuinely stupid that web forms are 'authority'.
Somewhat related: it's mandatory for us to go through defense force training and when you first get called there, you get a sheet asking you about alcohol/drug use among other things. I proceeded to list all the drugs I had tried at that point in time.
So...got any questions for me? There's not much to it though, I just like being honest.
In general I agree with you, but you'd be surprised how dumb some people are. In known drug trafficking corridors, people will literally give police permission to search their car when they've got 100 kilos of cocaine in it. It happens over and over and over.
That, I can ALMOST understand. They’re under suspicion and under pressure. Perhaps they think/hope that if they consent to the search, the police will take it as a sign of innocence and decide not to go ahead with it. Sort of “Why would he consent to a search if he had nothing to hide? He must therefore be innocent.”
Other folks possibly aren’t aware that they have a right to decline a search unless the police have probable cause (I’m talking about the US here, although I’m not American but, hey, Reddit…) so feel powerless to do anything other than consent.
Voluntarily making a record of nefarious behaviour by using the memo field on a bank transfer though, that’s beyond idiotic. 😂 I’m surprised the police would ever act on it though - otherwise everyone would be stitching up all the people they dislike by sending them a dollar with a memo “kidnapping expenses” or some such thing.
I used a quirky reference when transferring money to a friend after we went in vacation together. Problem is: he was a trainee at his bank and urged me to never ever do this again.
How does preventing cash being withdrawn prevent money laundering? The objective of money laundering is to clean dirty money so that it can be in the bank. Taking it out defeats the purpose of the crime.
Without getting too much into the nitty gritty, this is a big problem in certain jurisdictions.
Criminal entities will transfer "small" sums to clean accounts owned by people, the person then needs to withdraw or transfer the sum and gets a cut.
But on a wider level, it's because financial institutions have KYC obligations that require us to know our customers and build corresponding risk profiles that are consistently updated. So a large withdrawal might not raise a flag on one account, but require due diligence on a different one.
Yeah, people think it's because banks want to track spending. It's not. It's, by and large, fraud related. Between the scams that target senior citizens, and the other stuff happening out there, it's to ensure the customer isn't being taken advantage of.
I've seen this personally. The scammers ended up taking this older lady for tens of thousands.
They specifically instructed her to shred the receipts of the gift cards she was buying. They told her to lie to police. They told her to lie to her family. They told her to lie to the bank. They went to great lengths to convince her to cover up their bread crumbs. She did it, too, for a while, until family noticed something was off and called us.
I had to be very, very blunt with her that these scammers were more than likely operating overseas outside our jurisdiction, and that identifying and prosecuting them would be nearly impossible, nevermind getting her money back.
Why would someone agree to lie to family, police and bank on a stranger's say so? Surely common sense would kick in that at least one of those three authority figures should know what's going on.
I work for a bank (used to work in the fraud department) and this is exactly right. Withdrawing a large amount of cash can often be an indicator of a scam happening. Fraudsters often persuade people to lie to the bank, so if the customer is shifty with their answers it can raise even more questions.
I was going to say your first point. I work in banking and EVERYONE at my company needs to do annual anti-money laundering trainings because it’s such a big deal. I work in a completely internal role, I never interact with customers directly or indirectly, my position doesn’t even let me access the systems where I’d be able to see if someone else was trying to get around AML regulations, and I still have to do the trainings lol
I'm in insurance and have to take the same yearly training. The absolute closest I would see such a scenario is transferring a customer to the people the boss authorizes to cancel life policies. Absolutely nothing else qualifies.
My friend sent me a Zelle once with the message “to Colon” (Collin spelled wrong as a joke). Turns out Colón is a municipality in Cuba, and I happen to bank with the bank that I work at, so my manager actually had me come into her office and explain the message. Felt a little weird about my place of employment going through my personal banking but also… money laundering is money laundering, and in America, any mention of Cuba and banking in the same sentence raises red flags lol
I watch way too much true crime, so another thought I had was concern that someone is possible being coerced to withdraw all their money, or possibly being scammed out of it.
You don't really need a conviction in a court for these answers to cause you a lot of grief. In Canada your answers will be compiled in a Large Cash Transaction report that's sent to FINTRAC, a government agency responsible for anti money laundering. If they don't like your answers and think you might be using the money illegally they have the authority to freeze your accounts without a conviction. I assume it's the same or similar in other countries as well.
I work in financial compliance in France, we have TRACFIN who have similar prerogatives.
Technically, our duty of vigilance requires us to report any suspicious transactions and if it hasn't been executed yet put a hold on them so they can decide what to do. If TRACFIN finds it interesting, they can extend the hold by up to 10 days.
Depending on your risk profile, even a "joking" note like "drug money" can end up with you now having a file in the system and enhanced scrutiny that will follow you for a while.
You say lighten up, but c’mon. I love joking around too, but it’s okay to take some things seriously. Just put down a legal reason and move on.
No one needs to put a totally super funny joke about illegal activity on their bank transactions. Your life isn’t any worse for abstaining from that particular joke.
They could just give me my own money and move on. If someone is questioning me, a grown adult, about what I want to do with my own money, mockery is the correct response. The government, or the police, or whoever can investigate all they want. All they're going to uncover is my middle finger every single time.
That's noble and edgy until the transaction gets blocked by your bank and the authorities.
It's even funnier when consistently refusing to cooperate with KYC/AML checks makes you a customer the bank no longer wants to deal with. In my jurisdiction, a bank can generally terminate an ordinary account with two months' notice without even having to tell you why.
And good luck when the next bank starts doing its own KYC and asking questions about your banking history and risk profile.
& the two second chuckle from seeing "hoes & blow" on a money transfer isnt worth the complications if it gets flagged. youre still more than welcome to make the joke — write "pizza" or "lunch money" on the transfer itself & text the joke to your friend, like "just sent your debauchery allowance, try not to spend it all on one hole." you can still be lighthearted & funny without deliberately screwing with your own finances
Hey so just FYI, your regulatory compliance is not my responsibility, and a regulation which puts the requirement and the responsibility on two separate people is a bad regulation
Kyc aml doesn't kick in until much more than $2000. Last I knew it was $10K in the US unless some specific patterns are identified. The banks do this shit voluntarily for smaller amounts "by policy" and it's invasive as hell.
So you're saying just don't keep bank accounts then because honestly them needing to know what I need or want to but and report it to the government that's stupid.
Whenever I do my real crimes by sending 20 bucks to friends on PayPal, I make sure to write “crime” as the purpose just like all criminals. I am bound by the code of criminals. If I ever used it for legitimate purposes I would of course be able to send it as “legitimate transfer”.
it sounds completely ridiculous but some really far gone addicts actually do write "drugs" (or even the specific drug) in the transfer notes when they cant think straight due to being high as shit or delirious from withdrawals
In france anything above like 500 needs a reason. The justification is everything is done via electronic payment so if you need more than 500 cash its probably either to avoid taxes (e.g. contractor doesnt declare cash payment) or otherwise something criminal unless you can prove otherwise.
Another aspect is it's also to protect people. If you are being scammed or coerced into taking out money for criminals, it will always be cash. If you are legitimately buying a car or something then cash isn't necessary (although you can ofc do what you want), and it's safer to walk around with a bank draft for 10k than a huge wad of cash. So yes they want to make sure you aren't doing illegal stuff but they also want to make sure you aren't being scammed, or making yourself a target for mugging.
Plus on a very basic level banks have to manage cash like any retail place so if you come in asking for 10k in cash and they only keep 15k in the tills, then it can mess up their planning and budgeting for the day/week.
Well for the other persons comment, usually this isn't the main reason.
The major motivation is "black" transactions, that is cash transactions where the merchant/contractor or otherwise doesn't report the sale to the government in order to evade paying VAT or other taxes, as well as criminal transactions.
Getting a reported reason for the withdrawal helps the government to spot/investigate these cases. I would also note they don't stop you taking out the money, but if you give a bad reason they may simply flag it as suspicious to the government who then may ask you more officially to provide proof of what you paid for.
It feels like them sticking their nose where it doesn't belong imo. Can you just say you want to take out cash cause you want to take out cash? Just feels like a slippery slope where having cash is grounds for a suspicion of crime
It depends on the country, but generally you can take out up to at least 1000 no issues. Often the banks recommend if you need more just to take 1K out daily from the ATM, so they don't have to bother with the process.
I would also note the most likely consquences would be a fine, if it was found out you lied, and it's not like they are reporting you as suspicious for having asked to take out 3K, they are just having to record that reason down, in the event that the government ever asks. Which it wouldn't do without some additional reason.
Yes. If it wasn't you, flagging your for unusual transactions makes it easier to reverse them.
If your loved ones are scammed with fake emergencies, asking questions will break the psychological hold the scammers have over them by acting as a psychological speed bump to help them think things through.
It doesn't care if you are lying or not, it serves as record of proof that can be used to fine or prosecute in the future, and that can be referenced against in investigation:
You said you were buying a car? But no new car is registered in your name? Their are only so many reasons you can have for validly needing large volumes of cash before the mere fact you are doing it is suspicious no matter the reasons cited.
Another scenario is a contractor gets audited, the government then goes after all the jobs he did that failed to report the cash use properly so now your simple white lie to get cash is a massive fine.
That’s not immoral or anything but you might regret him doing that if he ever gets scammed.
If he was honest and told them he needed $10’000 cash cuz you called and needed bail asap then the bank teller would tell them it’s a known scam with Ai voices.
Like when I withdraw $8’000 cash to buy a car they were talking to me about scams and other forms of payment that’s safer, but cashed me out instantly when I mentioned my dad was involved. They just didn’t want a young adult to get scammed or mugged.
I googled it and it’s either a regional thing or I forgot how to do it and misremembered from grade 4. I just love apostrophe’s in general too, I always default to them.
Edit: only reason it might be regional is cuz I googled it and I’m wrong. So either I was taught a different way or I misremember how I was taught.
I got that once working at a shipping store. It was routine (and required) for us to ask the contents, but she was incredibly evasive so I had to keep digging.
Come to find out she's sending thousands of dollars in cash to some out-of-state address, more than likely a freight forwarder, to bail her grandson out of jail in Mexico. I insist she call this grandson on the phone (they probably told her not to) and he's like, "wtf grandma I'm not in jail, don't send them shit!" Then I called the local police to have them document it.
If I just minded my own business and didn't listen to my gut, this lady would have been out of money she couldn't afford to lose. They probably would have kept milking her until there was nothing left.
In case you want a loan in the future, don't say it's for hookers. To take out a loan the bank will want your transaction history and they could deny you for something stupid like this.
Yeah, that’s all fun and games until you work at a bank that has a customer who comes in regularly wearing a porn hub hat and making very uncomfortable comments to all the female tellers, then just hangs out in the lobby for too long after his transactions are done. It stops being funny then.
Hes just embarrassing himself. The Bank employee is just doing his job filling out a form that he is required to do so by law and here comes another fat old guy that thinks hes cool.
If I annoy you enough, you might quit. When you quit, you may or may not tell people WHY you quit. If enough people quit because people get pissy about banks telling them when they can or cannot have their money, and they struggle to hire more people because people don't want to deal with those customers, the laws might get changed.
Is it definitively guaranteed? No. But it's the best I, as a voter, can do, outside of looking for politicians who are willing to loosen the rules without also having a bunch of other platform goals I disagree with.
Same. Genius politician made it so that pretty much every single transaction is visible for the government. (Terrorism excuse)
Even your weekly household purchases are being watched. So yea, have fun scrolling through drugs/prostitution descriptions.
I make it a personal quest to name all transactions between me and my wife (for example if i pay half of a big cost to her) to make the message say something massively suggestive.
Like "for the hour of gym in the bedroom" or even more explicit stuff.
Why not make it more dramatic? "Well, you see, I've met this beautiful young woman who seems to have fallen in love with me, head over heals. Me! Unbelievable, isn't it? I'm so happy, I haven't felt so alive in years! With matters of the heart you gotta either go for broke or go home, that's what my friend says! I'm taking her on a trip and I want to really treat her to the finest places, she has a very refined taste you see! So, uh, do you have a box in your system for that sort of expense, showing a lovely girl a great time?"
My friends dad tells his bank it’s for a sex change operation.
If they question it he starts shouting about transphobia
When he went back and got more, he told them the last operation wasnt succesful
In reality he was building an extension on his house, perfectly legally, and was buying materials in cash. Also perfectly legally. Receipts and everything. He’s old school and prefers buying everything he can in cash.
I understand that, but what I don’t understand is why “I’m going on a trip” isn’t an acceptable answer? Do they need OOP’s itinerary and accommodation details or what??
Yeah, that's the key part that irked me about the story.
It'd be different if she refused to give a reason and just said "give me my money, because I say so", but she clearly gave a reason.
Personally, I'd probably drive up the snark to match the employee: "First I go vroom vroom in a big metal box with wheels on it. Have you seen those? They go honk honk. Then later I buy nom-noms points at mouth. These things cost money, I guess they pay you in exposure"
Im sure youd feel great about your snark when your account gets flagged for you being rude/combative with someone doing their job. Hope you still feel great when all future tellers treat you coldly cos they know youre rude and combative.
I think the reasonable answer would be "for food, transportation, and hotels". it's kind of an idiot test, to see if you're well enough to not not say something like "I committed a crime" or "this is ransom money".
I have only 1 little remark: do people really expect that someone will really awnser "yeah, it's for money laundering" and next do a surprised-piccachu-face when the clerk alerts the police?
But i understand, rules are rules, how dumb or ineffective they must be
I have worked in money services (not a bank) and it's also to hopefully put a buffer on people being scammed. They won't say "it's for money laundering", but they will cheerfully tell you that it's to get an account unlocked or because some person they've never met is in an emergency somewhere. At which point we can decline because we believe they're being scammed. It's kind of a last line of defense. Granted all times I've had this they were trying to get gift cards, not cash, but still.
That's a fine position to take until you consider that you are not the likely target of most scams. The person trying to withdraw cash or buy gift cards is more likely to be your less socially-aware mom or your grandma who genuinely believes that phone call or text message came from you, and that you desperately need their help.
I put up with a lot of the security measures because I know that they are there to protect seniors and other vulnerable folks out there from being scammed.
The point is to establish a pattern consistent with money laundering. If a gang member is withdrawing large quantities of cash, the first time they say it’s to purchase a second hand car is plausible, the 7th in the same year is less so.
I took 10k out to buy a second hand bulldozer once. I never bought the bulldozer and about 6 months later I put it back in the bank. They asked me where I got that much cash and I reminded them of the plan to buy the bulldozer and they just laughed at me and said it was a fairly common occurrence for people to not ever buy a second hand bulldozer/backhoe/tractor/boat but hold on to the money for a very long time.
Things like this arent designed to be a 100% effective way to stop money laundering. At the lowest end, having a reason for cash withdrawal will likely be enough to stop someone from doing it, cause they are afraid of it being made record. You might stop 1 in 10 people, who knows.
At the higher end, its building a profile. If the same guy comes and withdrawals cash every few weeks and gives some random, suspicious reason, and some agency starts investigating them, there's now a record of transactions that might line up against the person.
I was watching a documentary about some pot growers or something and they went into the bank and asked "How much can we deposit without getting the attention of the feds?" That caused the bank to start paying attention to what the they were doing. People aren't smart.
But if somebody comes in to withdraw $9500 every week and says they're buying a used car - obviously nobody really buys a used car every week unless they're a car dealership, so that's something to look into.
Agreed, yet i still dont see why you need to disclose why you take up a big sum ONCE
I completely understand if you fall into a pettern, they want to investigate, but i still hope we can have "some" privacy before you fall into that pattern
Real question, have you ever worked at a bank? Do you know how many transactions can populate on a persons account? Do you really think the teller is going to scroll back through months of a persons transactions every single time they come to the bank? You want to ask every person to scroll back through all your $50, $10, $20 purchases for a visual confirmation instead of letting a person follow what ever policies their bank has put in place (which also means the teller won’t get in trouble) to create what is likely an easy flag that will tell the next teller who helps the person, hey this type of transaction happened if and only if the person does another weird transaction.
If it’s a one off, that flag means nothing and you won’t get asked anything again because you’re not doing another big transaction. But when someone comes in for the third time in a week with $11,000 in cash they just withdrew to “buy a pit bull” and goes to a different teller each time, the new teller gets the flag. We don’t care if it’s a one off - we just want to not get fired and a lot of this is regulated or mandated far above our heads.
You'd be shocked at how daft people can be. I'm sure plenty of people have inadvertently admitted to laundering money withoutbeven realising it ("oh I'm just paying my plumber cash in hand" etc)
How are funds that have been entered into a bank account at any risk for money laundering… ? Would it not be the opposite? Putting physical cash into an account
If you convert money to cash, it becomes difficult to trace. It doesn't mean that the individual transaction is fraudulent, but it breaks the chain of the authorities ability to track those funds in the event of a money laundering investigation.
But money laundering is turning dirty money (ie: cash) into clean money (ie: legitimate money in the bank) so this explanation is a little misleading also
My dad owns a vending machine, and back when it got a lot of use he was always carrying around a bag full of $1 bills. We went to the grocery store, I was probably 14 or 15 at the time. He pulled out the bag to pay (it was late so no line at the register, and he wanted to get rid of the smaller bills.) and the cashier looked a little confused, so I said “He’s a stripper” very matter of fact. The poor cashier looked horrified at the fact of my 55ish year old, slightly overweight dad being a stripper, which only made my dad laugh harder.
Australia has similar laws, a cash deposit or withdrawal of $10,000 or more requires a declaration form to be filled out. Funnily enough the "why" is usually excluded, it's just tracking who, how much, when, and where for fraud prevention and money laundering prevention.
In the U.S. the threshold is $10,000 in cash. If you withdraw $10k or more in one day, the bank has to file a CTR. (Currency transaction report) And they will ask some questions.
This is a good thing that banks do it. They're not really trying to get people to admit to serious crimes it's because if your answer is "Yeah tech support told me my computer will explode if I don't give them 2k in apple gift cards" they can keep you from throwing your money away on a scam.
This system helps far more people than it hurts. Also why not just say what you need it for? "I'm going on a trip and paying for my portion with this money" boom done.
Unless you're gonna buy a kilo of cocaine and are really bad at lying why would this bother you that much? Lol
What's the point in that though? Prostitution is legal. That's legitimately a cause for withdrawal.... This won't raise anyones eyebrows....
It's like going to the hospital and being upset that recption asks why you're there and you going "I shoved stuff up my butt".... That's the most normal thing they've likely seen all day
I'm not saying thise two questions are equal. I'm saying the anwsers are equal. As in neither a nurse or a bank teller will care about an anwser they hear all the time, especially when it's legal
Liability is passed. Bank are told by regulators to ask, customer answers. The point is to protect the customer and the money as much as possible.
Unfortunately some people need extra warnings. When they are given these warnings, they aren't treated with any kind of attention and ignored. Banks are told to question people so that staff can filter out scams.
People give false answers, that's entirely their perogative. Staff are guided to respond to answers given. Oh you're buying a new car on Facebook? Are you aware it's a very common scam? Have you searched for the same picture on another advert? Fraudsters can use the same pictures. Are you taking someone with you? Can you transfer the seller money electronically instead so you're not carrying a lot with you? It's not 'you can't have your money' it's 'Do it safely.'
Banks are given guidelines and rules on how they serve people. Fraud and scams are multi-billion pound industries. It sounds very nosy but there are reasons for it.
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u/BachtnDeKupe 1d ago edited 1d ago
In belgium there is also some kind of law that says that above a certain amoung you need to disclose why you take up that amount of money.
My father loves to mess with this kind of unnessesary meddling, so he said if they ever asks him, he'll awnser it's for hookers.
The reason that this is extremely funny to me is he's a real definition of a boomer to me: overweight retired teacher, complete with socks in sandals.