CTR Question

We have a business that will make a deposit through the night deposit. It will have more than $10,000 in cash and we will file a CTR. He also includes a deposit slip in the night deposit bag for part of the cash to be made to his personal account which is a different TIN number. The money is not separated. I believe we should include both accounts on the CTR. The center is beginning to stop adding the cash to the CTR that supposed to go to the personal account. I believe this could be interpreted as structuring.

Your opinions please.

This is clearly a CTR-reportable transaction, since it cannot be argued that the transactions were not made by the same person if they are in the same night bag. The problem is, you have no information on who made the "drop," so you don't have information for section B of the form. But yes, report on both accounts on the CTR.

I don't see any evidence of structuring in the facts you have given us.

Reducing the amount reported on the CTR by the portion of the cash deposited to the personal account is nonsensical, but it is not structuring. As John indicates, the transactions are clearly subject to aggregation because, being in the same bag, they were obviously conducted by the same person.

In addition, while the CTR instructions accept the fact that the bank had no opportunity to obtain identifying information at the time of the transaction, Administrative Ruling 92-2 suggests a bank needs to put forth some effort to obtain the information on aggregated transactions:

People's Bank is encouraged to make a reasonable effort to provide the information for items 4 through 15 on the CTR. Such efforts could include a search of the institution's records or a phone call to the department store to identify the persons that conducted the transactions.

I would like to add a question on this type of transaction. If the night drop bag contained $8000 in cash and 3 separate individuals made deposits throughout the banking day- say $700 each- would we complete numerous section Bs, one for each of the 3 individuals? I was told that the individual was identified if their transaction alone was reportable, otherwise Section A was completed and in section B "multiple transactions" was checked leaving 15 through 25 blank. It seems i get more confused everyday.

If you know at the time the transaction is conducted that a CTR will be required I believe you must get the information on the conductors and complete multiple section B's. I believe the section B night drop box and multiple persons box should both be checked as well.

Let's get "real-world" about this. You don't have ID info for the night drop. You won't have ID info for the first two $700 deposits because who gets ID for such small transactions? If you system has "real time" aggregation capability, you might get a red flag when the third $700 deposit is processed, since you're now over the $10K threshold. At that time, you might obtain ID info on the conducting person.

Now the CTR looks something like this: The business is listed in section A as benefiting from the deposits, and the appropriate account is listed in Part 2. The ID for the third runner is in Section B, along with a "night deposit" checkoff, and a "multiple transactions" checkoff. The "multiple transactions" box at the top of the form (item 1) is also checked.

Now, if you follow up on the first three deposits, as suggested by the language cited by Ken (above), you may get ID info on one or more of the transactions -- you might even find out that the same person did all four deposits. If you have ID info on additional persons, you add Section B entries. If you are satisfied that you've got info on all persons, including the runner who made the night drop, you uncheck the two boxes at the top of section B.

Or, if you don't even realize that the CTR trigger is pulled until after the work is processed for the night (common), you make some kind of an effort to determine who made the transactions, probably fail at that, and file a CTR with Section A completed, and section B sporting just the two check marks.

Ok - I have a similar situation and a question on the multiple transaction box in Section B. If there are multiple transactions in the night deposit (or in our case a courier shipment), and they aggregate to over $10,000, should the multiple transaction box in section B be checked. If no, would that be a technical violation if it is? Just asking because our teller processing software completes the CTRS and checks this box and the processor is telling us that this is not a technical violation - right or wrong? Thanks.

Technically, the boxes at the top of section B are best considered "excuse" boxes that say "our Section B is blank or incomplete because ..." The "night deposit" excuse would be sufficient in the case you've described, but it would not be a violation to check the "multiple transaction" box, too. You should, of course, be checking the "multiple" box in item 1 on the form, as well.