As the BSa officer, I am having issues with this situation. Received a call from a person who lives out of our area. Wants to open a checking account with 1 Million dollars cash. Questioned the source of funds only to be told its is from restaurants he owns? Higher ups are excited about this, I see red flags. He did not say he owns these establishments. Why would he have that much money in cash on him. I wouldn't think that a restaurant would be that cash intensive. My first thought is that this is a cannabis cash intensive business trying to establish an account. Could not tell us how he heard about our institution. He was not referred by any of our current customers. This situation just does not sit right. We don't have to allow this person to open an account here. I would like to be extremely cautious but need any direction or assistance to deter them from allowing this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Another question - why would someone 'out of your area' want to open an account with your financial institution?

I agree - this reeks.

Sounds much like that thread from a few years ago where the guy was "selling some land" (or something like that) and the entire transaction smelled like skunk spray. Yet the bank was high fiving each other for this potential victory.....that I don't think ever came to fruition.

Who in their right mind puts $1 million dollars in a checking account to begin with? It is BS and someone needs to slap management in the face and bring them back to reality. It either ain't going to happen or something is terribly wrong as you suspect.

$1,000,000.00 in cash? LOL.

This!!! Haven't heard anything so "sus" as the kids say these days in a while.

Just to clarify - you mean an actual million dollars in physical currency?

Whatever the case, my guess anon is that you are a smaller bank. A lot of people will try to get an account with a smaller or denovo bank because there is less sophistication, controls, and management and wanting desperately to grow. Most of the founding officers are LOAN officers with NO (read ZERO) operations experience. If you are new or small, lout of area depositors will test your systems.

(as a denovo) When someone asked to bring in a large account, and not from the neighborhood, we asked point blank why they would drive by 10 banks to get to us. Year 1 of operation, we had 4 accounts we did not open - within 18 months, 3 of the 4 were under indictment for money laundering and/or fraud/

I agree with Rocky P, I am with a small bank and lately we've had multiple "out of area" personal and business customers wishing to open with us. They think because we're small we don't have the tools or controls to review their documents or monitor their activity when in reality I think its just the opposite and we scrutinize more.
I keep pushing back and making our branch staff ask why they want to bank with us, or what brought them here...if they can't answer or the answer appears to be "fluff" we deny the account.

And wouldn't you know we had the same scenario just today....non customer, with out of state business documents wishing to open an account that would have over a million dollars in it! oh and this person would not be a signer on the account and is not an owner of the business, could we just DocuSign everything to the would be signers/owners?!
Can't make this stuff up!