Situation: Restaurant owner, long time customer, is sick on a Monday and restaurant employee brings weekend cash deposit of $12K to bank teller line on Monday. Restaurant employee has not made any prior deposits for restaurant and freely provides name, address, etc which is entered as "person conducting transaction for another" correctly but restaurant employee does not feel comfortable providing teller with her SSN and leaves the bank after bank teller accepts deposit and provides receipt. Teller files CTR with TIN field marked as "Unknown".

Should bank file a SAR, against transactor, based on an attempt to evade recordkeeping or reporting requirements?

Technically, you have the prerequisites for a SAR filing. The individual refused information that has caused your bank to provide an incomplete CTR. Mind you, the CTR is valid with the "unknown" response for the TIN. And the trigger amount of $5,000 was surpassed.

It's my strongly-held belief that tellers ought to be trained to refuse to accept a deposit when the individual presenting it refuses to supply personal information that is required for the filing of a CTR. Some banks have taken the stance that they will accept one such transaction, but will contact the business owner/manager to inform him or her that it can't happen a second time. I can accept such a position.

As an aside, I don't think that a single SAR filing for refusing to provide one's SSN is going to result in arrest and prosecution of the stubborn messenger. But it would not be good for examiners to find a lot of "unknown" SSNs in CTRs for business deposits among your bank's filings without SAR filings.

You need to revisit your training. A $12K cash deposit with no cooperation from the deposit maker equals and an immediate refusal of the deposit. You have no other options.

While John has stated that "Some banks have taken the stance that they will accept one such transaction", I disagree. It results in a direct CTR violation.

I would be calling the business owner and getting the information or tell him that his banking relationship will be terminated.

We have a similar process to what John/Randy described. If a conductor, customer or not, refuses to provide any information we requested, we refuse to process the transaction.

I would also concur with Randy that a call needs to be placed to the actual customer. When I was the BSA Officer at a small community Bank that had a lot of currency transactions we had this same issue pop up a few times prior to training the tellers. Each time the business owner understood the issue and provided their employee's SSN.

I can understand why the messenger may have been reluctant to share his/her TIN with the teller, but when the law or regulation demands it, personal misgivings have to go by the wayside. I can also understand why the business owner didn't think about the question, since the bank undoubtedly had his SSN and never needed to ask for it. And, finally, most business owners do provide the information if called once they recognize that there's a legal requirement. I'd be very suspicious if your business owner does not provide the number from the business's records.

Basis for a SAR filing, a worthless one, but the individual caused or attempted to cause the bank to file a CTR that was incorrect or incomplete.

However, the reviewer's criticisms should be focused on internal controls and training in connection with CTR completion.

And you know, given the recent massive data breaches, I really can't blame an employee for not wanting to give out their social security number for a deposit that does not belong to them. Or perhaps they may fear getting a 1099 and being taxed on the deposit.

Honestly, CTR's have run their course and really should be replaced by monthly cash reporting via upload, similar to what we do for credit reporting, or IRS reporting. Then we can stop filing SARs for stupid CTR issues, like structuring, and focus on, oh I don't know.., ACTUAL suspicious activity.

Or, perhaps, the business of banking, instead of being cops!

I agree that you shouldn't waste time filing a SAR. I also agree the deposit should have been refused. Use this opportunity to train your Team.