I believe the IRS presenter at Top Gun reiterated that point. It pretty well eliminates the, "Golly gee, I didn't know that!" defense.

What about a letter with the brochure that states:


The bank has received informational brochures, a copy of which is enclosed, from the government to assist us in educating customers about currency transaction reporting requirements. We are providing this information in anticipation that it is of interest to our business customers whose account activity tends to be cash intensive.

We value your business blah blah blah ...

Safest thing to do is just hand the customer the brochure, without any editorializing from bank employees. I'll read it to you, but don't ask me to comment on it. And even giving out the brocure is a rare occurance.

I seem to remember speaking to someone at FinCEN at a seminar about the brochure. He was particularity adamant that the brochure not be changed in any way or have any "notes" attached with it.

I don't know if FinCEN's position on this matter has changed.

If it's unedited and unexplained you can tell any third party reviewer: "Of all the opinions on the planet, FinCEN's is the only one that matters on this issue. By the grace of Congress, they are the final interpreter of the Bank Secrecy Act."

Mess with it and your argument erodes dramatically.

"By the grace of Congress, they are the final interpreter of the Bank Secrecy Act."

I'm glad you said that. Now, could you kindly explain that to some OCC, FDIC and Fed examiners that have come up with their own interpretations?

Divine inspiration?

For those that don't use the Brochure, or any additional notice to the customer, how do you handle it when the customer keeps structuring? Our policy is to close accounts if suspicious activity continues. Unless you give the Brochure to the customer at closing, if you stick to the old adage that banks can close accounts at any time without having to give a reason, it seems like this would result in alot of angry people. Of course, the argument could be made that if they structure for a long period of time, we don't want them anyway.

If you have a modern signature card it will give you the right to close the account. You are not required to offer any reasons. Just put them on notice of your plans citing the language from your contract and give them a reasonable opportunity to close it themselves.

Hopefully, they got the brochure and you mentioned that fact in your SARs. However, giving them the brochure at the time you close the account will pretty clearly indicate what your problem is and suggest that you have filed that form the brochure talks about. You do not want to do that.

There have been lots of posts here where people want to know what they should tell the customer. (It's such a perennial question that Mary Beth did a presentation on it at Top Gun in 2011.) The guarantee is that the more you tell them, the less satisfied they will be and the more heated the conversation will become.

If it helps, we tell the customer that their account is being closed due to the account activity. Most customers know exactly what we are talking about and say very little other than to request some time to move their account.

Occasionally we get a hot head who threatens to sue to the bank and at time we point to the signature card language that Ken referenced above.

I loved the title of Mary Beth's presentation then, and still get a chuckle out of it: "Dear Customer, You're Toast."

Ken mentioned: "...It's such a perennial question that Mary Beth did a presentation on it at Top Gun in 2011". I wonder if there is any way to get a copy of that presentation? I would love to hear it.

I enjoy the customers who think only banks file CTRs... so they get money from some non-bank source that is required to file, a casino for example, and they give em all the information to complete a CTR willingly and without hesitation...

Then come to the bank and "structure" to avoid the hassle of the bank filling out a CTR... only to create the bigger hassle of the SAR. I call these customers the "too smart for their own good customers"

As a rule, we hand the brochure to customers who ask us how to structure transactions to "avoid that report that you have to do" (as they love to say)... and inevitably after skimming the brochure they ask... so "how should I make this deposit?" to which we respond. "'we' cannot tell you how to make your deposit, please read the brochure carefully." To which the customer usually says, "okay I'll deposit some of it now and come back in a few days to deposit the rest..." and then the branch staff e-mails me the scenario after the customer leaves... and I exectue my BSA duties.

I used to not like doing it because of the additional work and monitoring, but now I feel like I hope the IRS investigates you for being too smart...

Frankly I would love to print out 31 CFR Chapter X

and wordlessly hand that to the customer. If the customer tries to ask anything further, simply reply "Federal law prohibits me from providing you with any further information."