An employee of our institution was dimissed recently because of her teller outages. She had had several written warnings about these occurences before she was given her walking papers. It was suspected that she was taking the money for personal use, but this could never be proven. In a situation such as this, when it cannot be proven that embellzement occured, only suspicion of such, should a SAR be filed??

My philosophy has been this: If you know the money was not given out to a customer, and there is no way a package from the Fed was short, then your only alternative is that the money was taken by an "insider", be it the teller that is short or a co-worker. Last year, we had 3 situations where tellers were short a large amount, and after a thorough review of their work, there was no way it could have been given to a customer. In 2 of these cases, multiple packages were missing bills. Nothing could be proven, but a SAR was filed in each case, and our investigation concluded that there had to be insider involvement in each shortage...hope this helps.

Can I ask what dollar amounts you are talking about?
You can give a range if you like.
Thanks.

If an employee is involved, the dollar amount is moot. The amount was enough to terminate the employee. I like the idea that if you rule out other scenarios, what is left. I also used to emphasize that the "S" was for suspicious, not guilty.

The S in SAR is for suspicious. I would always file a SAR in such cases. Too often, a teller such as this will end up at another bank and do the same thing. At least by filing a SAR the personal identifying info will be in the database.

I suggest filing the SAR. Section 351 of the USA PATRIOT Act expanded the safe harbor provisions for filing SARs on employees. By filing the SAR, you can then disclose the underlying facts of the employee's dismissal in a written employment reference. You can't disclose the fact that you filed a SAR, but you can discuss the reasons for termination without fear of liability, as was so often the case in the past when Banker A would call Banker B about B's former employee who is applying for a job with A. No one would venture to tell A about instances such as you described in your post for fear of being sued by the former employee.

Of course, the safe harbor applies for SARs that are filed in good faith, not for those filed maliciously. All that means is that you have some bona fide basis for the SAR, like the suspicions you described, and don't file SARs when no suspicions exist. AR.