Social Security Fraud - Clarity

I have a question needing clarification on what is meant by the Social Security Administration on “concealing facts or events that affect eligibility for benefits" is considered fraud. We have been informed at BSA training seminars that a customer who conceals their balance to qualify for government benefits would be grounds for reporting of the suspicious activity to FinCEN. However my uncertainty of this is what if the customer is only receiving social security and has saved their funds over a period of time and now has a high account balance. The customer becomes concerned of losing their social security benefits so they moves all their funds into a cashier's checks for this sole reason of not wanting to lose their benefits. The customer will come in on an occasional basis and get less cash from their cashier’s check and purchase another cashier’s check with the remaining balance. Would this be considered as social security fraud? Since the only incoming funds are from social security and they are not receiving any other incoming funds and the concealment really is the social security which we presume are already recorded by the SSA. Would this still be considered as Social Security Fraud?

Warren Buffet is eligible for social security - What fraud is occurring beside the customer being totally confused.

I'm confused also. My husband gets social security but it's not based on our assets - just his income.

Rolando - I believe the training you went to may be talking about other benefits, not social security. Also, we will not allow customers to 'chip' away at cashier's checks. They either deposit it or take the cash back in one lump sum.

If you know or suspect that concealing funds from the government for any reason, maybe that would be enough for you to file a SAR regardless of the reason, especially since you may not know the reason. Their motive doesn't need to make sense, and we don't need to know it regardless to decide something warrants a SAR. Maybe the person that overheard the statement heard "government benefit" and mistranslated it to "Social Security."

I'm not saying your activity warrants a SAR, but I do think your decision whether or not to file can be made without diving too deeply into this possible contradiction.

Whatever you decide - stop allowing this process to continue.

Your comments always lighten my day! Who says AML isn't fun!