If Jim tells me to deposit 12K of his money into Linda's account, the transaction is clearly "by" me. However, is it "on behalf of" Jim, who owned the money and ordered the deposit, or "on behalf of" Linda, who benefits from the transaction?

This is just an example. What I am trying to get clarity on is the right (i.e. regulatory) interpretation of the "by or on behalf of any single person" definition. Primarily for aggregation/detection purposes.

1995 guidance that John Burnett recently pointed to (for a different reason) suggests that "on behalf of" for deposits at least means anyone known to benefit from the transaction(s). See Question 14 of this link: http://www.fdic.gov/news/news/inactivefinancial/1995/fil9570a.html

Is that still valid?

What about withdrawals? Is the "on behalf of" the intended beneficiary of the cash (e.g. the bookie I have to pay), or is it limited to either the person at the counter, or anyone else with a role on the account who could have a agreed to the conductor withdrawing the cash?

Finally, should "by or on behalf of" be in the same aggregation scenario? I.e. someone deposits $6K into my account, which per the above is on my behalf. Then I deposit 6K on my boss's account that same day, so I'm the "by" part of the equation in that transaction. Should a 12K CTR on me be triggered?

Thanks, and sorry if this takes you down a beaten path.

In your first scenario (deposit) I would show Linda and any other joint account holders in Part 1 Section A, never Jim. In your withdrawal scenario I would show the conductor or anyone else with a role on the account as you have stated. In your last scenario I would not aggreagte these transactions.

I agree with devs fan. I have always used the mantra of who is benefitting from the transaction not "on behalf of."

I would think that FinCEN would want to know about Jim. He is the one causing the cash transactions to be done and he is presumably the source of the cash. Let's say that Jim sent multiple people in to deposit cash into different accounts for A, B, C and D. If they are not aggregated under Jim's name he can do daily transactions with sums far in excess of $10,000 and never show up on a CTR.

Dekker, you must be writing a training manual right now, eh? I've said that it all comes down to personnel knowledge. If your customer says "Give me $15,000" and leaves - then it is just your customer on the CTR. If your customer says, "My boyfriend told me to get this money out so he could give it back to his mom when she gets out of jail tomorrow," then your CTR will go into multiple pages, all based on how much you know. You don't have to be able to prove a specific person benefited, but in that type of rare situation you should note why you filed how you filed (i.e., reference the customer's statements somewhere in your notes).

Thanks for the responses so far. They seem to cover the spectrum: Ted Dreyer disagrees with devsfan and tex.gal, while Maytagman puts the onus on the customer/teller communication. If they're all correct, then the CTR regime is not as objective as it's made out to be.

What I'm after is not a training manual to deal with individual instances as they present themselves. My main interest is putting the regulatory definition(s) into rules for aggregation, so that a system can automagically trigger CTR instances (for human judgement). That of course gets you into the fun discussion of choosing to ask for identification for cash transactions below 10,000... but that's another matter.

If the 1995 statements are still valid (???), then I guess we have to go with the "benefitting from" interpretation of "on behalf of", which has the practical advantage that they should virtually always be people with a role on the account - unless of course no customer account is involved.

The last scenario from my original post still puzzles me - both transactions are "by or on behalf of" me, resulting in 12K coming into the bank. Why not aggregate? Because we should separate the "by" from the "on behalf of"? I understand how I the employee and I the private person should have little to do with each other in this example, but again, I'm looking for system rules first, not human interpretation.

Thanks once more, and let's ignore the identification issues for now.

"The last scenario from my original post still puzzles me - both transactions are "by or on behalf of" me, resulting in 12K coming into the bank. Why not aggregate? Because we should separate the "by" from the "on behalf of"? I understand how I the employee and I the private person should have little to do with each other in this example, but again, I'm looking for system rules first, not human interpretation."

There would be no CTR required as no single individual/entity conducted or benefited from transactions involving more than $10,000 in cash.

Jeroen: Just to be clear, my only point is that if you know that Jim is sending other people to make large volume cash transactions with his money, it's hard to argue that the transaction was not done on his behalf. His name is probably going to be more useful to FinCEN than the people (smurfs?) that he sends, or the account holders. In the situation you describe it is not an either/or proposition. I would include both Jim and the account holder on the CTR.

rlcarey's response indicates to me that "by" and "on behalf of" are to be monitored separately. And that "benefitted" is the primary interpretation of "on behalf of", even though you could add the person "ordering" the transactions if you know so, as TedDreyer suggests.

Thanks for the help!