Hello,
Here is the situation I have. Bank customer John Doe only has a personal trust account with the bank. John owns some rental properties in town. A large development/construction project is underway in the small town where John lives. ABC Nationwide Builders has sent a crew to this town to work on this project for at least a year. This crew is renting a home from John Doe. These workers receive biweekly payroll and/or rental reimbursement checks from ABC Nationwide Builders. All checks are well over $1000 per person. These workers are endorsing their checks over to John and he is coming into the bank and cashing them by himself. Putting aside everything else that is weird about this. Does this make John Doe a "check casher" under the MSB rules even though he does not own a business? Under FinCEN's definition, it states "a person engaged in the business of a check casher". But it also says "this rule applies to a business that engages in the cashing of checks".
Thank you in advance for your opinion.

To me "Check Cashers" deposit checks they have already cashed for someone. If John Doe is bringing the endorsed checks into the bank and the bank in return is then cashing the checks for John Doe sounds like the bank is the check casher. I would be concerned about accepting 3rd party endorsed checks for deposit or being cashed.

Based only on your description, it does not appear he is an MSB if he is receiving the checks and they are endorsing them payable to him and then he brings them to the bank to be cashed. I look at it that way as it would be the same if he deposited them into his account.

The risks are exponential by accepting third party endorsed checks as mentioned. If he is getting these as rent payments, what does he need to cash for and why would he not deposit them into his account for rental purposes?? How much is he cashing, how many apartment does he have and how much are the rents and where is the paper trail for income tax purposes?

I would put a quick and hasty stop to this - sometime around yesterday.

I just had a conversation with FinCEN regarding this situation that I thought I'd share. Basically I was told that this person is acting as a business, hiding behind a "person" because he is cashing multiple reoccurring checks and not just a one-off check. It was suggested that I play hard ball with him. Either he creates a business and/or sole prop and registers as an MSB or we close his account. This is where my mind was heading with this in the beginning. Of course there are other concerns as well, as Randy mentioned.
Thank you all for your feedback!