I have a customer who closed his checking at least three years ago. Within the last year, he has written at least two checks totaling over $5,000 on the closed account. We would not have had knowledge of this in the BSA/Fraud area except that we received a subpoena on him. I can not, of course, mention the subpoena in any SAR but would we even file in this case?

I know the payee's institution may be filing.

Thanks.

LIKEWISE - should we be watching for all large dollar checks we return from our bank for potential fraud and filing a SAR in certain cases???

I'd file, since this is SARable activity (check fraud), with an identifiable suspect, over the mandatory reporting threshold.

I wouldn't advocate reinventing the monitoring wheel based on a single case, but it may be worthwhile to tweak your training to include circumstances like this (checks written on a closed account). this will be particularly helpful for the back-office folks who routinely process and review the rejected items.

I'm curious- why would you not mention the subpoena in the SAR?

From everything I've read you are never to mention them in the SAR because they are confidential in and of themselves. Stupid sounding to me but that is what I've always heard in every webinar / seminar I've attended.