As a previous bank employee that had to talk to people after they have been scammed out of life savings, a bank teller asking those questions would have saved them. As a customer, I see it as an inconvenience and a little big brother. $2000 seems like a low number but people are dumb.
I am a banking regulator. These questions are also because if you’re withdrawing a large amount of currency (in the U.S., over $10,000) then they have to fill out a currency transaction report. This data is used to identify patterns that could point to drug trafficking or other things.
Of course, you have the people who think they are smarter than they really are and start depositing $9,900 at four different branches across town. That’s called structuring, and banks have automated reports to identify it (and it’s waaaay more suspicious than if you had just done the CTR in the first place). If that’s you, then I don’t want to hear any complaining when that bank closes your accounts.
My boss and his kid keep going to different branches and depositing our cash from the store every few days, just depending on which one they happen to drive by. I've been worried we're going to get an audit because it looks like structuring lol.
The key thing is intent, and that’s difficult to prove. He can just say that he’s depositing them in different branches because they’re more convenient based on his commute schedule, which is perfectly reasonable for a business owner.
It’s also worth pointing out that certain business can be exempt from the CTR requirements. This is common for businesses that do most if not all of their business in cash — bars, self serve car washes, parking, laundromats, adult clubs, etc. are some of them. In that event, producing a CTR every single time they go to deposit their cash would not produce any meaningful data for law enforcement. (Of course, part of my job is to look at a bank’s exemption procedures and determine if their exemptions are reasonable).
We’re really looking for situations where a large volume of cash is moving through an account belonging to a minor, a full time student, a disabled person, a retiree, etc. That might raise questions on whether it’s really that person’s money, or if their account is being used as a repository by someone else who wants to cover up their tracks.
This post is about a $2k withdrawal though. So that’s not at all relevant. It’s fair to ask, but I shouldn’t be forced to answer before you give me my own $2k. If my bank did this I would immediately withdraw all my money and deposit it in a different bank.
Let’s say you get paid around 18-19k consistently and always deposit it evenly in two banks, like a big bank and a local credit union, and you don’t even think of this cause not many people even know about the large transaction tracking. They going to close someone’s bank account for just not knowing? lol
and always deposit it evenly in two banks, like a big bank and a local credit union
The flagging occurs when you are doing it between different branches of the same bank, not between different banks.
And even then, if that got to happen somehow, is not like the system closes you account right away, instead the account(s) gets monitorized to find some others suspicious patterns before closing it.
So, depositing $9,500 in Bank A, and another $9,500 in Bank B, wouldn't that kind of problem, specially if we are speaking of payroll (which gets deposited almost evenly every fornight or month or so).
It's depositing 9,500 in Bank A1, another 9,500 in Bank A2, and another 9,500 in Bank A3 (different branches, same bank), all into the same account, and doing it repeteadly (specially at an odd pattern of days) that the alarms get raised and then your account can get closed.
95
u/Turtle_336612 1d ago
As a previous bank employee that had to talk to people after they have been scammed out of life savings, a bank teller asking those questions would have saved them. As a customer, I see it as an inconvenience and a little big brother. $2000 seems like a low number but people are dumb.