FDIC Gets Serious With Banks And The Bank Secrecy Act!

“The law may be diverted from its true purpose to violate personal property instead of protecting it then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect oneself against plunder or to use it for plunder.” – Frederic Bastiat

The FDIC is getting serious with banks across the nation to insure that all suspicious activity is reported insuring that no money laundering is being handled at their federally funded, insured facilities.  You can be sure that these new requirements in customer relationship banking will cause more ire for you as your held suspect when depositing or removing your hard earned assets from the reach of the Banksters!   

Banks today have announced that they will be training, retraining and conducting ongoing training to insure compliance of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AML) and the Office of Foreign Asset Controls (OFAC).  BSA regulatory requirements include, record keeping, BSA reporting and SAR suspicious activity monitoring.  Here you can read the NEW Bank Secrecy Act &Anti-Money Laundering (BSA/AML) Examination Manual the FDIC will be using for 2015.

http://www.ffiec.gov/bsa_aml_infobase/documents/BSA_AML_Man_2014.pdf

Two parts of this document will impact you as a bank customer, the CTR and the SAR as bank requirements ramp up their compliance with new Bank Secrecy Officers.   The revisions made since 2010 include that a teller MUST complete a Currency Transaction Report when you deposit or withdraw cash funds from your bank account whether it be $5,000 - $10,000 or more for bank checks, money orders, traveler checks or fund transfers or wires.  You WILL be scrutinized by BIG government’s new regulations!   

A currency transaction report (CTR) is a report that U.S. financial institutions are required to file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (U.S. Treasury Department) for each deposit, withdrawal, exchange of currency, or other payment or transfer, by, through, or to the financial institution which involves a transaction in currency of more than $10,000.^.

When a transaction involving more than $10,000 in cash is processed, banks are required to have a system that automatically creates a CTR electronically, tax and other information about the customer is usually pre-filled by the bank software. CTRs since 1996 include an optional checkbox at the top if the bank employee believes the transaction to be suspicious or fraudulent, commonly called a SAR or Suspicious Activity Report.  A customer is not directly told about the $10,000 threshold unless they initiate the inquiry.  A customer may decline to continue the transaction upon being informed about the CTR, but this would require the bank employee to file a SAR on that customer.  Once a customer presents or asks to withdraw more than $10,000 in currency, the decision to continue the transaction must continue as originally requested and may not be reduced to avoid the filing of a CTR.  For instance, if a customer reneges on their initial request to deposit or withdraw more than $10,000 in cash, and instead requests the same transaction for $9,000, the bank employee should deny such a request and continue the transaction as originally requested by filing a CTR. This sort of attempt is known as structuring and is punishable by federal law against both the customer and the bank employee. Informed individuals who structure their transactions at an amount near, but not over $10,000 could have their accounts closely monitored by tellers and bank staff to see if a pattern emerges that could warrant the filing of a SAR.  It is illegal for a bank employee to tell a customer that they are reporting the CTR as a SAR as such disclosure violates Federal regulations.  All reports will be held for 5 years and reviewed for BSA compliance by a branch compliance officer or an assigned outside officer of the banking entity.

The BSA was created in 1970 to assist in criminal, tax, and regulatory investigations while the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is responsible for compliance.  This program and its policies are mandated by statute and compliance is required for all financial institutions to include check cashers and A.T.M.’s,  securities and commodity firms including brokers and dealers, mutual funds and commodity traders, casinos, card clubs, insurance companies, precious metals dealers, loan or finance companies and pawn shop brokers.

The BSA regulatory requirements include internal controls including independent reviews, a BSA officer, training of personnel and a stringent customer identification system.  Its components include a system of controls, policies, procedures, and processes to manage, monitor, and control risks which ensure compliance with BSA regulations.  Every 12 to 18 months a qualified party will conduct and independent review of a bank’s processes and reports to ensure BSA compliance.   

Reporting requirements to the FinCEN includes CTR’s, designations of exempt persons, and SAR’s records that must be maintained for 5 years to include transaction data, customer identification data, 5 years from account closure.  CTRs must be filed for currency (cash or coin) transactions over $10,000 conducted by, or on behalf of, one person. CTRs must be filed for multiple currency transactions that aggregate over $10,000 in a single day.

The BSA allows exemptions by banks from reporting currency transactions for governmental departments/agencies and listed public companies and their subsidiaries.  Banks MAY exempt an otherwise eligible non-listed business customer or payroll customer after the customer has conducted five or more reportable transactions.

SARs MUST be filed for transactions involving insider abuse in any amount or aggregate amounts of $5,000 or more when a suspect can be identified.   Those aggregating $5,000 or more, if the bank knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect the transaction may involve potential money laundering or other illegal activity or be designed to evade the BSA or has no business or apparent lawful purpose or is not the type of activity a customer would normally conduct a SARs must be filed.  Remember the elderly restaurant owner from Iowa whose $30,000 bank account was confiscated and 600 others that were confiscated under the new Civil Asset and Forfeiture laws.

http://www.whynotgold.com/archives/FDIC_ISSUES_WARNING_FOR_BANK_ACCOUNT_HACKS_THEFT_OR_CONFISCATION-88.html

New laws concerning the internet and Net Neutrality as well as our government deciding which businesses can operate utilizing their “Operation Choke Hold” selections will limit whether or not gold and silver can even be purchased online or at a store in your town in the future!  American’s have no idea where all this is going!  The opportunity to transfer worthless paper into real assets of gold and silver, the only true money, will disappear if our government deems it necessary for their survival.