5 ms·
No, because a small business that does a lot of cash transactions would, on review of the account, look like a business, not like a money transmitter. There wo
by patio11 12y ago
No, because a small business that does a lot of cash transactions would, on review of the account, look like a business, not like a money transmitter. There would be checks written to vendors, withdraws from a payroll company corresponding to a predictable cycle, probably a rent check on a predictable cycle, etc.
If your only two transactions are "Deposit lots of cash" and "transfer it to another bank" the bank will come to the conclusion "To the extent that there is a business here, it is probably money laundering." The bank was right.
- code_duck 12y agoThese transactions would be half money laundering only if the buyers only came from illegal activities and they were avoiding deposit in a typical bank. It's not laundering by the author as he is not involved or aware of the buyers' money's providence. I don't see how it would be money laundering more than say, buying $3000 of gold from a local gold and silver shop. I'm hardly an expert in... Anything, though. If you care to explain that would be lovely.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoMost of legitimate financial activity forms follow well known patterns. Illegal activities often follow different patterns. It's reasonable for a bank to flag suspicious accounts, even though you'll always have some false positives - because if it looks like money laundering, most of the time it is. Also I don't know if this works with banks (having no personal experience here), but I remember back from the time when early Kickstarter projects got their PayPal accounts frozen, that the rule of thumb was: if you're going to do something on your PayPal account that looks weird/atypical, it's a good idea to call them in advance and tell them about that.
- code_duck 12y agoI agree it may look like money laundering. But one can't really say "the bank was right" in this case since it wasn't money laundering.
- bazookajoes 12y agoIt's not technically money laundering, but it might be bit coin laundering if the money the he received was ill-gotten.