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People are massively dishonest about this, though. Like there are occasional Ask HN posts where someone is outraged that their bank/payment account was closed f
by tlb 3y ago
People are massively dishonest about this, though. Like there are occasional Ask HN posts where someone is outraged that their bank/payment account was closed for “no reason”, but eventually it comes out that they’re in North Korea selling cannabis to Iran or something.
But it does seem like the world lacks a manual on How Not To Get In Trouble With Your Bank. “Structuring” in particular is something someone might innocently do just because they like round numbers.
- mminer237 3y agoCTRs are required for $10,000+. Structuring is more like if you're depositing $9,999, which is kind of the opposite of a round number.
- idontpost 3y agoIt would also be two deposits of $5k or 10 $1k deposits, etc.
- AmericanChopper 3y agoThe only way to get any assurance about staying out of trouble with your bank is to have enough money that they start to not care so much about the risk of doing business with you, and to pay a lot of money to an expert to do the AML compliance for you.
- JohnFen 3y agoThe other way is to communicate with the bank. Talk to them. If you're doing something involving a large amount of money, or something unusual for you, call them up, tell them what you're doing and ask for their help. Don't do everything online. Do the big or unusual stuff person-to-person. It doesn't even have to be an in-person visit. Give them a call.
- AmericanChopper 3y agoThis is a woefully naive position. Unusual activity on your account is an easy way to get a SAR. Calling up to check whether you’ll get a SAR is an even easier way to get a SAR.
- JohnFen 3y agoIt's always worked very well for me for decades. I wouldn't ever ask whether or not I'll get an SAR, though. That sort of question is pointless. Instead, I just treat my bank as a core partner to my business and include them in my plans. The side-effect is that nothing I do looks suspicious to them.
- opportune 3y agoCompletely agree that banks should provide prescriptive guides. IME they really don’t like when you work around their eg 50k/day ACH transfer limit by initiating 50k ACH transfers on 4 consecutive days to move an account of 200k. But they don’t tell you what they actually want you to do if you want to move 200k - and for obvious reasons they probably don’t want to make these transfers fully frictionless. They just assume you’ll know to show up at a branch in person or get on a phone to ask about it and treat you like a criminal if you don’t.
- dmurray 3y agoIs that even "working around" the restriction? Surely moving 50k on each of 4 days is what you're expected to do in that case. It still means the maximum a fraudster can get away with is 50k if the fraud is discovered in one day. My last bank had limits like 20k/day and 50k/week, so it seems like yours could have 50k/day and 60k/week if they "really don't like" you using it like this.
- patmcc 3y agoNo, you're expected to call and set up an appointment with a banker who can sell you on some kind of business account that has appropriate services for moving money in that way. And yes, this will cost more and take more time than the spreading-it-out method.
- alright2565 3y agono, this is too cynical. just give them a call, authenticate yourself, and they'll happily raise the limit for you. maybe if you're moving 50k/week they'll try and get you on a business account, but at that point you're already not using the account for the purposed you claimed when you opened the account.
- opportune 3y agoOne of the reasons banks have these restrictions (besides the obvious thing of making it difficult to take large sums of money out because it hurts their business) is to prevent fraud. They want to prevent the case where some criminal gets physical access to my computer, or my login credentials, and drains my account without my knowledge. So they want you to initiate a manual verification that you really do intend to move such a large sum to prevent that fraud. If you do what I did, you usually get a temporary hold on your account and some very skeptical bank employee calling you to grill you on what you’re doing. On one hand I get it. For every story like mine, where this is just a temporary frustrating inconvenience, there’s probably a story where grandma lost her life savings after talking to the nice man from Microsoft on the phone. But also they don’t make it clear at all what you are supposed to do as non-criminal to work around their restrictions, which is just bad for customers.
- boilerupnc 3y agoFunny enough. Whenever possible, I round all my tips to cause the total to generate a particular two digit cents amount - so that I can easily detect fraud when I scan my statements. It’s my low tech error code check.
- velcrovan 3y agoHas this ever turned up anything suspicious?
- eadler 3y agoI track almost all of my expenditures. At a restaurant I used to visit fairly regularly I noticed that my costs were often off by approximately ±25 cents. This was inconsistent and not always in one party's favour. Upon reporting and investigation it turned out that (a) I routinely wrote 'math' along with a total instead of a tip and (b) one of the waiters only approximated the math required. Nothing nefarious and I'm not even sure if I won or lost out of this - but it was interesting to catch.
- pdntspa 3y ago> I routinely wrote 'math' Why would you do this?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dboreham 3y ago1+ bottle wine?
- topherclay 3y agoI had to reread this because it didn't make sense to me the first time because it's so insane.
- ska 3y ago
- zoeysmithe 3y agoThis is a little victim blamey. Banks mess up all the time. Regressive policies in capitalist institutions are extremely common. Incompetence is common. Negative action in service of the profit incentive is common. There's no shortage of people who found their accounts closed for "fraud" who did nothing wrong, but instead were victimized by the algo and the general incompetence of banking tech. Personal financial experts often tell people to carry a credit card from a bank that isn't yours or have a checking account at a separate bank because this is so common. Lastly, the people moving money to blacklisted places aren't opening Bank of America checking accounts. There's entire cottage industries and crypto and shady international banks, etc ready to cater to them. They're not getting banned because they use services that don't ban them for moving money around like this. But everyday working class people get banned randomly for moving gifts or tuition money around, etc.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago> The people moving money to blacklisted places aren't opening Bank of America checking accounts. My understanding of money laundering, and the laws designed to catch it, wasn’t that it’s used to get money into illegal places. Laundering is used to get money back out of illegal places in a way they can spend as legal money - exactly a Bank of America account.
- AussieWog93 3y agoAnecdata, but I've had both my bank account and Stripe account closed for basically "no reason". I still don't know why Stripe closed my account (I was selling cheap USB oscilloscopes online, never had a complaint. Couldn't get in contact with them at all when it happened.) My bank account was closed because I filled in a KYC form incorrectly, and they didn't have a process in place to follow up properly when this had occurred.
- ponector 3y ago[flagged]
- izacus 3y agoMaking an honest mistake on a complex form isn't "lying" and neither is it an offense that warrants financial punishment. What the heck?
- ponector 3y agoHow about seeing like a bank? From bank's point of view it could be either honest mistake or deliberate lie. And if person is lying and have been caught - they always say it was an honest mistake.
- Kalium 3y agoAll the bank knows is that they tried to get to know someone as required and that person gave them bad info. This is either intentional or unintentional. Now, they could go in for a high-touch customer care process, but that has drawbacks. It's expensive. Every person intentionally providing incorrect information is going to claim it's unintentional, meaning that this high-touch customer care process is going to have to double as a strong anti-fraud screening. From the bank's perspective, this is failure-prone and needlessly risky. If we're seeing like a customer, this is a shitty experience that they can't understand, negotiate, or do anything about. They're being punished and don't know why. If we're seeing like a bank, it's a way to control a risk for a known price.
- 3y ago
- stouset 3y agoI've also heard repeatedly in conversation people frequently admit to structuring financial transactions for a variety of reasons, completely unaware that doing so is a felony.
- immibis 3y agoIs it illegal to round up your transaction to $10,001 for the purpose of making the bank file the form so you can't be accused of structuring to avoid it?
- PrimeMcFly 3y agolol, no. Why would it be?
- creer 3y ago(the problem with these ideas is that they make you responsible for knowing all these things - which ideally is what you pay the bank for.)
- xur17 3y agoDoes the bank have a human look at / file the form, or is it automatically generated? (Unless they are required to do it manually, I can't imagine they do)
- sicromoft 3y agoIt’s only illegal if you’re intentionally doing it to avoid reporting
- stouset 3y agoThey are intentionally doing it because of mostly imagined consequences of having the transactions be reported. And committing a felony as a consequence.
- teemur 3y agoSorry, what does "structuring financial transactions" mean in this context?
- _lvbh 3y agoAnecdote: I hade my Revolut account suspended for 24 hours for a reason they refused to disclose yet admitted as their mistake last week
- throwaway2037 3y agoThe solution is simple: Stop "banking" with entities that don't have a banking license.
- mdekkers 3y agoRevolut has a banking license, at least in Europe
- throwaway2037 3y agoIn Lithuania. No offense to any Lithuanians reading here, but I do not trust their banking regulators as much as French, German, Dutch, Nordic, etc. Obviously, selecting Lithuania is a clear case of regulatory arbitrage. I still cannot believe people are doing serious business with Revolut. Do you really think the Lithuanian regulators are going to help (catch bad behaviour) during a banking crisis? I have no faith.
- mdekkers 3y agoI genuinely don’t know where to begin with addressing this level of ignorance. All Central Banks, including the Bank of Lithuania, are governed by the European Central Bank. Passporting works because of an equality principle. Lithuania has worked hard to become a fintech hub for Europe, and that isn’t based on a poor regulatory regime. If you can bring actual facts to the table as to why the Lithuania banking license is inferior, we can have a discussion. Now you are just spouting baseless “Lithuania banking license is bad because of Lithuania” nonsense.
- throwaway2037 3y agoHow do you explain the 2014 Danske Bank money laundering scandal in Estonia? To be clear: I recognize that Estonia is not Lithuania. My point: Estonia is also a part of EU / Eurozone and its central bank is governed by ECB. That governance did little to nothing to stop the money laundering scandal. It went on for years, which implies incredibly weak enforcement of banking regulations. Outside of the economic majors in EU, I am generally distrustful of banking regulation _enforcement_. Yes, the laws are written, but are they effectively enforced? I doubt it.
- rendaw 3y agoI'm ready to believe this, but IIRC on previous posts people accused the poster of doing shady things but I don't remember seeing it ever coming out that they actually did. Do you have some links?
- ackbar03 3y ago>but eventually it comes out that they’re in North Korea selling cannabis to Iran or something. I only do this on the occasional Wednesday though when things are quiet at work