Does anybody have a standard letter to send customers who are engaging in structurintg of deposits? Something saying "one more time and your account will be closed" or "here is what structuring is, and you are doing it, so knock it off"....

No. We would file a SAR and monitor the situation. If repeated, the account would be closed, no questions asked or explanation given other than 'thanks for your business, but no thanks'.

Don't forget the handy pamphlet from FinCEN available here: http://www.fincen.gov/whatsnew/html/20090224.html Maybe your tellers could include them with deposit receipts? ;-)

Our Retail folks are pushing back hard on the "thanks but no thanks" aspect, and want a "I am sure you didn't mean to, but what you are doing is illegal" letter to g out first.

I'd LOVE to close then out no questions asked.....

We send the pamphlet that kw004h mentioned; it says it all. If the activity continues to 3 SARs we close the account with a standard close letter.

Your retail folks want to accuse a customer of doing something illegal - boy, talk about a lawsuit ready to happen. If you want to close the account - close the account. If you want to leave it open - leave it open. If you close - just tell them you are closing the account without accusation.

As for the "I am sure you didn't mean to" communication, use caution. As Randy suggests, your bank should not accuse the customer of breaking the law. If you want to do something, send the customer a letter with a copy of the FinCEN pamphlet on CTR filing, which includes some limited information about the law against structuring. Your cover letter can be fairly generic, saying something like "we want our customers to be familiar with certain federal law requirements that may affect them."

I agree. Hence the request to see if anybody had a letter already.

The vast majority of people who are structuring are doing it because they just want their money and don't want to wait for a CTR to be completed. I bet 90% have no clue structuring is a bad thing.

But the compliance burden and costs are unecessary and can be avoided. Intentional or not, done with Malice or not, it's costing the bank money.....

My favorite reason:

"My accountant told me to always deposit less than $10,000 in the account."

Which means you might want to ask for the name and address of their accountant and include that tidbit in the SAR narrative.