Following a recent audit, I am looking for guidance on what exactly to select in the "Were any of the following instrument types/payment mechanism(s) involved in the suspicious activity? (Check all that apply)" in the following scenarios:

Customer deposits money (check, ACH, wire, etc.) and structures withdrawals afterwards.

The deposit itself is not suspicious (e.g. tax refund, payroll, etc.) but we do list it in the narrative to show the source of funds. The only suspicious transactions, listed in the transaction detail, are the withdrawals.

Technically, though, the deposit was "involved" in the suspicious activity in that it provided the funds for it.

Are the checkboxes referring to the deposit supposed to be checked in this section as well as "U.S. Currency"? Any guidance on this? What are others doing?

Do you include the deposit in the amount involved section if you don't consider it to be suspicious? If not, I wouldn't check the box for check/ach/wire unless it was suspicious. I would be checking the box for cash in your scenario. Your narrative should be enough for a reviewer to figure out why it wasn't checked.

I only check the boxes that apply to transactions that are considered to be suspicious and are included in the amount involved section.

I also only check the boxes for transactions that I find suspicious.

I ended up calling FInCEN on this. Their answer was that the "instruments involved" should be checked for anything that was related to the activity. So, if there was a check deposit (not-suspicious) and then structured cash withdrawals (SAR is being filed for structuring), then we should still select "check" in the "instruments involved" section - it is referring to what was involved, not what was suspicious.

This is consistent with what we have heard at trainings, etc. so we are going with this.

The next version of the SAR includes a new check box: Deposit account.