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#155926 - 02/02/04 07:04 PM SARs not related to BSA
U of L Card Fan Offline
New Poster
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 21
Employee is terminated due to $2,000 shortage. No confession/No proof of theft by that employee. Should SAR be filed? I know that the SAR instructions state Inside abuse involving any amount.

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General Discussion
#155927 - 02/02/04 07:12 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
Paragon Offline
Diamond Poster
Paragon
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 2,164
I vote no - if it's a cash outage - that can happen to anyone and if there is no proof beyond that it would be unfair to the employee (ex-employee in this case) to file a SAR.

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#155928 - 02/02/04 08:24 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
bubba Offline
Junior Member
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 27
Florida
I agree, without any insider abuse proof it would not be right to file a SAR. This should be (in my opinion) logged as a teller outage, who knows you might have something come up down the road through bookkeeping that clears this up.

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#155929 - 02/02/04 09:24 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
JacF Offline

Power Poster
Joined: Nov 2001
Posts: 6,719
PA
I agree, but the flip side is if you find something down the road that indicates that the employee had misappropriated the funds, then you must file at that point.

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#155930 - 02/02/04 10:19 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
Anonymous
Unregistered

What if the employee knew there was a shortage, then continued to cover up the shortage by force balancing every day? On the one hand, it appears to be a an "error", but what bout the attempt to hide the error?

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#155931 - 02/03/04 12:48 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
Retread Offline
Power Poster
Retread
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 2,548
Southeast
If the employee is making false entries to "force" balance, that could trigger SAR filing. However, you still need to determine whether there was criminal intent, or just fear of losing their job.
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#155932 - 02/03/04 02:24 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
Anonymous
Unregistered

In that case, whether the "intent" was criminal or not, the end result was "criminal". Also, doesn't the SAR have a listing for "mysterious disapparence"? Could it not fall under that...?????

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#155933 - 02/03/04 02:48 PM Re: SARs not related to BSA
AnonRegulator Offline
Gold Star
AnonRegulator
Joined: Mar 2002
Posts: 451
Everywhere, USA
Section 325 of the USA PATRIOT Act expanded the SAR safe harbor rules to include situations like this. So, you may file a SAR on the employee. (Hopefully, it's a FORMER employee. )

What the safe harbor does for you is protect you when making disclosures in an employment reference of any suspicious activity you reported on an employee. You may disclose the info, but not the fact that a SAR was filed.

How many times have you had an employee caught with their hands in the till, only to have the amount not big enough for anyone to prosecute? The next thing you know, you are getting a phone call from another bank asking for an employment reference for some dishonest employee you fired. Before, no one dared to say anything about situations like this to prospective employers for fear of a lawsuit. As long as you file a SAR on those cases, you can divulge the info, but not the fact that a SAR was filed, and not be held liable in a lawsuit about the disclosures.

Filing in these cases is optional, so it's a judgment call on your part. Also, the filings should be made in good faith, i.e., based on fact and not malicious, otherwise the safe harbor doesn't apply.

I vote for filing the SAR in this case. AR.

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