For better or worse, sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night realizing you made a mistake. Note the time of this mea culpa.
If a customer cashes a check or checks in excess of $1,000 for a person on any given day, it becomes an MSB. If it sends a wire transfer for one of its customers, it becomes an MSB. There are more triggers. However, when one of those triggers is pulled, failure to register is a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act and is reportable on a SAR without strict regard to the $5,000 threshold.
Based on recent guidance, reviewing the activity 90 days after the end of the period covered by the first SAR would support a bank's responsibility to file a continuation SAR if the MSB activity continued. If one of the MSB triggers was pulled in that 90 days a continuation SAR would be necessary regardless of whether the amount involved exceeded $5,000.
Arbitrarily tying the filing of continuation SARs to a quarterly MSB review will not work unless the first SAR just happened to cover a period that ended on the last day of the preceding quarter or the bank files the second SAR before the end of the first 90 day review period.
For example, assume a bank does its MSB reviews at the end of each calendar quarter. Assume too that it recognizes an unregistered MSB and files a SAR for the period ending April 20, 20XX. (The next required review period would end 90 days after April 20.) In order to force the activity into its quarterly filing regimen, the bank would have to file the second SAR for the period ending June 30, earlier than otherwise required.
My apologies for my first responses.
Last edited by Ken_Pegasus; 08/09/12 07:01 AM. Reason: Correct response
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In this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.