I am working on a possible kiting case. The issue I’m having is the customer only makes deposits in cash. What are some patterns I should be looking for in regards to kiting with cash? There are 4 accounts involved and all are with my bank, (there is no outside bank involved). Is it possible to kit with Cash? I am reviewing this account due to this customer coming upon hard times and the type of business he is so I am doing my due diligence in making sure he is on the up and up. any help would be great.

Yes, it is possible to kite with cash. Is he/she cashing checks at a convenience store or using an ATM?

I'm not certain what you are looking at, but it's not a kite. Kiting is a banker's term, not a legal term, but here's the description used by FinCEN in materials supporting SAR filing and I believe it's as good as any:

A practice in which an individual with accounts at two or more financial institutions intentionally utilizes the delay in the check clearing process to write checks from one account to deposit into the second account, all the while knowing that the first account does not have collected funds. The subject continues this cycle, moving checks between accounts, to make it appear as if funds are available and using the balance in the accounts for expenditures.

Although not described here, there is such a thing as a cash kite, but it still involves writing checks where there are no underlying funds and then covering those checks with cash deposits. I don't see that in your fact situation.

It's possible, but you may want to move this into the private forums to discuss.

With no other banks detected at this time i am goin on the notion that thier is no kiting going on at this time. thanks for the info.

Would the comments be the same, or different, if instead of checks written to other banks, we saw checks written to:

Finance companies?
What we suspect are finance companies? (writer uses abbreviations in the payee field, endorsement stamp is light and illegible)
Supermarkets on a daily basis for even-hundred-dollar amounts i.e. $100, $200, $300?

Would any of you close for cash kiting?
Would you file a SAR for suspecting cash kiting?

sorry to *bump* this back up ...


We had a customer who was kiting, and we instructed him we would no longer accept anything but guarenteed funds.

He then proceeded to conduct a "cash kite" - keeping less than $50 & creating a monitoring nightmare - so we decided to close him out.

The customer - of course - is threatening to sue ... because he "complied with our demands to only use guarenteed funds".

he has no grounds right? (if I had a dollar for every time a customer threatened to sue .....)

Read your deposit account agreement. I think you'll be fine.