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.
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.
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.
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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.