Claims he has been "storing it at his house for years." We are a small community bank. He does most of his banking at a large mega-bank and they won't take it. We also want to say no. And what do we do with reporting this??? SAR obviously. Also inform law enforcement immediately.

Any other advice?

Do you have knowledge of this customer? What he does for a living, what his transaction history show? Not trying to make this a doable situation, just inquiring.

I always take into consideration what the customers primary bank has chosen to do even if I don't know why. 4 million in cash is not just something that people store in the house for years so I would run in the opposite direction personally.
Good luck!

P.S. If management says we could really use $4 million in deposits kindly remind them that once the funds have been laundered, errrr deposited, through your bank they will then move the funds elsewhere.

We used to get claims from wackos like this all the time - going to deposit huge amounts of cash - going to get in a huge wire transfer. It is usually a sign that they have fallen for some type of scam. I would not even give it another thought until he shows up with the 90 lbs of $100 bills or 450 lbs of $20s at the bank.

If you know the other bank he deals with, 314b them and see what information you can obtain from them on his banking accounts. And maybe see if they even have such a policy with regarding to cash deposits that large.

being in an area that is prone to some horrendous weather events, i am familiar with people/companies that take very large cash withdrawals from their accounts prior to these seasonal events, because cash becomes king when you have no power, water, open banks or other businesses, etc. they use it to pay employees, for supplies, etc, but generally return it when no longer needed. potentially, and this is a big potentially, this could be something like this that perhaps the legitimate cash that was not used was not returned to their account, and they did have a way to secure it at home and they think they need to finally return it. but i think they'd also be able to easily prove if this was the case, and not say "i've just been accumulating it." that just rings all kinds of warning buzzers.

now, being an eternal skeptic, i find this scenario as described hard to believe. people who have that kind of money don't leave it stored, because that earns them nothing. not saying it isn't feasible that something like this could be on the up and up, but i'm 99.99999999999999999% sure this is nothing you want to get engaged in.

oh, and your account agreement should (hopefully) state something along the lines of that you can choose to refuse any deposit, just use that option to refuse it.

So you reject the deposit and do your SAR.

Is there a requirement I am not aware of whereby law enforcement has to be notified that a person has [insert X amount of cash] on them? That's a little extreme, don't you think? What if they showed up with $2M? or $1M? or $500k? or $250k? or $100k?

At what dollar amount exactly would you or wouldn't you call law enforcement in these cases? I'd be more concerned about getting hit with a lawsuit for potential discrimination and profiling. People can sue over anything these days, and that *will* cost your bank money to argue against.

PS. Someone who is money laundering is really bad at it if they a dropping 4 million dollars at once. Just IMHO.

Come on folks - no one is going to walk into a bank with $4 million in cash - get over it and move on.

This cracked me up! ^^^
Being in a HDTA, my head goes immediately to: someone had a very successful crop this year. Successful gardener, but yea, dumb money launderer.

Coming from a small community bank myself, I agree with the advice. Refuse the deposit, file the SAR. I would not contact LE. The dollar amount on your SAR should be all the red flag you need.

If you want to 314b the other FI, go for it, but you might not get much useful info as 'Mega' banks don't normally know much about their customers beyond transactions. Nobody keeps or gets that much money in their house just from "storing it".

Come on folks - no one is going to walk into a bank with $4 million in cash - get over it and move on.

This is almost assuredly the correct response. How much does $4 million in cash weigh? Worst case scenario - this person shows up with the cash? Are you actually okay with this much cash in one location?

About 88 pounds if it's all $100 bills.

Just to add. $4M - If you put away $100k a year (must have been a great job with a lot of benefits), it would take you 40 years to accumulate that much, (assuming of course, that the "depositor" is that old and financially capable of that much extra cash.)

Seeing that half of the bills would have to be over 20 years old, and $100's have a much shorter lifespan than 20 years, there may be many valuable bills. He should probably talk to a numismatist to find out the real value of his stash. (or should the bank actually consider, look at the age of the bills to immediately debunk the story). 40 years ago, Carter - Reagan were in the White House.

I don't think I could put my hands on $40 without hitting the ATM first.