I just came to the tardy realization that when fulfilling subpoena requests our deposit ops area would not know about any non-on us checks we cashed against an account--we can see them in BSA because our software picks up a reference account number but they cannot because they do not show up on customer statements or histories. I get more heartburn on this topic regarding business accounts even though our tellers are not supposed to cash checks for businesses against their accounts, they do. Are we violating the subpoena and would every bank have this same issue if their branches allow this?

That is pretty much an affirmative depending on how the subpoena is written and the exact records that they are seeking.

Frankly, I'm far more worried about the fact that anyone would "cash a check against" a business account as if it would offer some sort of recourse for a check endorsed by an individual. It's a powerful indicator that they have no real comprehension of what they are doing.

A subpoena that would adequately describe this activity would have to be tailored to a particular purpose and the bank's response would probably be "There is no state or federal law that would require us to segregate this information and the search itself would be nearly impossible."

But Ken, they said that they already possess this information. It is just in the BSA Department and not available to the people that normally answer the legal requests. IMHO - that presents an issue because they could not do what you just suggested. The information exists.

It is similar to a bank that I was just in that has transaction records for all customers stored in their BSA/AML software for ten years, when their retention is 7 years for the core system that is used by people answering legal requests.