Our customer purchased a vehicle on eBay and wired the funds to the seller, which apparently was a fictitious person/business. The receiving institution posted the wire based on the account number. Are both banks required to file SARs in this instance? The names that we have are likely fictitious, so I'm wondering if we file, should we file without a suspect and list the eBay user ID and name given to our customer in the narrative? Any feedback will be appreciated.

Filing or not will largely depend on more than the information you provided. Is it over the reporting threshold for unidentified suspect? You have no say if the other bank files so don't even waste your time worrying about it. At the end of the day you can always check with FinCEN for guidance.

Good luck!

Unless the receiving bank does wires for non-customers, which is rare these days, the beneficiary would be a customer of the other bank and would have had to produce ID to open the account. I would not assume the names are fictitious. If you sent a service message to the other bank asking for the return of the wire, they should do some investigation on their side. I would file if it were above $5,000.00.

of course, the recipient of the wire could have been duped as well, told to keep a small amount for themselves and forward the rest to their soon-to-be-spouse in some foreign land...

The receiving bank posted the wire based on the account number alone. They confirmed it was a valid account number; that's all they were willing to do. Are we required to file the SAR with so little information to go on? The $ amount is slightly under the filing threshold for suspect undetermined.

While the name you gave them did not match, the account number did. So, the other bank knows who actually owns that account.

Contact their BSA Officer and ask him or her for the name(s) and/or discuss mutually registering under 314(b). Having the name will affect your reporting responsibility if you consider them to be your suspect(s)...

I can't go into a lot of details because it is still under investigation, but I am aware of a case where the owner of the account receiving the wire was unaware of the wire until after it was credited and the funds were subsequently removed. As far as can be determined so far, an unknown suspect gained access to the receiving account and completed the transactions without the account owner's knowledge or permission. Nothing surprises me anymore.

FinCEN's response issued today. https://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/FIN-2016-A003.html

You may also want to read SAR FAQ 17 or maybe not as it might muddy what you think you already know. https://www.fincen.gov/whatsnew/html/sar_faqs.html

Neither link has anything to do with the original post... There was no fraudulent e-mail. There was no computer intrusion.

Sorry, I merged two different scenarios together and made them one. My apologies.