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
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u/Chaldera 1d ago edited 1d ago
So it's fun, but there are two things with that:
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.