Bonnie, congratulations on your 1000th post and reaching the level of Diamond Discusser. I appreciate your contributions to this forum!

Bonnie - wouldn't option 1) not allowing straight cash purchases, be similar to helping the cust avoid a CTR?

One of the regulators blessed the idea of making customers deposit cash and purchase monetary instruments from their accounts. The theory was that a paper trail is created, so no structuring is involved.

John is correct. The reason we are supposed to be keeping those logs for purchases from $3,000 to $10,000 is to remove the anonymity of these smaller cash purchases. By having the transaction go through an account, you remove the anonymity because a name, TAX ID, etc. is now linked to the purchase.

And remember, monetary instrument purchased for more than $10,000 in cash still requires a CTR.

Now if you get someone who comes in frequently to purchase monetary instruments for less than $10,000 in cash, you may need to think about a SAR for structuring. And if you think about how most of us are keeping these logs, it would be easier to spot such structuring if the cash went into the account first.

Important....Is everyone checing Travelers Checks too?

I just received this information from the ABA:

Major Problems with 314 (a) Requests to be Addressed by Treasury Next Week

In response to a flurry of requests from FinCEN under section 314 this week and last to banks and other financial institutions to search all of their records to determine if there are any matches of individuals, companies or other entities, the federal banking agencies and the Treasury met to try to address the tremendous confusion that has ensued. Many ABA members have contacted us about the problems they have experienced with 7 day turnarounds, failure to send the request to the correct "point of contact" in the institution and the lack of any apparent organization accompanying the requests. ABA has urged the Treasury to remedy this flawed procedure as soon as possible. We understand that there will be some type of announcement next week.

If you receive a request before the announcement contact your functional regulator until further notice.

Absolutely. They are part of the $3,000 - $10,000 purchases of negotiable instruments non-log (twig?). If it's less than $3K it simply isn't significant enough to bother with.

Are you all discussing the emails that are comming in from FinCEN. All of mine say negetive no resonse necessary. What exactly are we suppose to do with these.

I plan to keep them in a folder titled "FinCEN Requests for Information" and document what I searched to discover we haven't had, nor do we now have any accounts with these individuals/businesses, nor have we had any transactions with them (so far). We are due for a compliance exam sometime in 2003, so the examiners will probably ask for such a file that shows documentation of our searches and the results.

It is my intention to keep evidence that searches were performed for cya purposes. However if response is negative, no return response to Fincen is required. I don't know if I have seen a definitive answer to a question I posted yet . Are we suppose to check the payee on monetary instruments when performing this research?

Exactly what I'm doing, Jules. Hey, great minds think alike!

Ann Robertson, who works with me, discovered something as we were discussing whether or not we had to search payees on cashiers checks or not.

The cover letter says we have to search transactions that are required by law or regulation to be recorded or that are recorded electronically. Although information is required by law and regulation to be recorded for cash sales of monetary instruments, the payee of the instrument isn't one of the pieces of information required to be recorded. So unless you record the payee electronically, I don't think you have to search payee's of cashier's checks or other monetary instruments under these FinCEN requests. And if you do record the payee electronically, searching should not be very difficult.

Thanks, Ann, for pointing this out. I agree with your interpretation and hope the rest of you find some comfort in this.

I'd really like to know if anyone got any bites in this fishing expedition. Since we can't really tell... Let's take a poll!

Hits?
Nope, nada, zilcho
Yes - we've found some hits!

That is also my interpretation. Payee is not required to be recorded. So,as far as searching records that we are required by law/regulation to keep we are O.K. Next question, does imaging constitute electronic filing? On our system, as with most I would assume, retrieval of items such as checks, etc is performed using numeric characters not text; therefore, although electronically maintained and recorded, information such as the issuer or payee is not a retrievable request.

I would think that imaging without some type of indexing on the payee name would not constitute having recorded the information electronically for purposes of these requests. Based on my interpretation, I don't think FinCEN is trying to force you to search any records manually unless they are records you are required by law or regulation to maintain.

Jim - you are correct. In one of the "other" FinCEN threads, this was discussed. I cut and pasted the recordkeeping requirements, and payee isn't one of them.

Big sleeper, however, is any sales to Non-Depository customers requires more extensive collection of personal information.

In reply to:

---

more extensive collection of personal information

---

But still not the payee.

From the ABA:
Major Problems with 314 (a) Requests to be Addressed by Treasury Next Week

In response to a flurry of requests from FinCEN under section 314 this week and last to banks and other financial institutions to search all of their records to determine if there are any matches of individuals, companies or other entities, the federal banking agencies and the Treasury met to try to address the tremendous confusion that has ensued. Many ABA members have contacted us about the problems they have experienced with 7 day turnarounds, failure to send the request to the correct "point of contact" in the institution and the lack of any apparent organization accompanying the requests. ABA has urged the Treasury to remedy this flawed procedure as soon as possible. We understand that there will be some type of announcement next week.

If you receive a request before the announcement contact your functional regulator until further notice.

Any news on this since last week? Have the requests temporarily dried up? Or should I brace myself for another wave?

I haven't heard anything else and don't know if that was the initial surge of pent up requests or they are laying low trying to figure out a better way of doing things.

Just had a quick message from BOL Guru Barbara Hurst (editor of Bankers' Hotline). Apparently, there is a temporary "moratorium" on requests under 314(a) to give the Treasury/FinCEN the oppportunity to work some bugs out of the procedure. The moratorium is anticipated to last at least two more weeks.

Just think of all the "real work" you can get done in that span of time!

GREAT! That means we'll start getting more of these damnable missives just when our staff is taking time off for the holidays!

Bah, Humbug!

One more important point. I just spoke to Barb again and learned that under the moratorium, Gary Sutton with FinCEN says that if you currently have information requests from FinCEN that you are working on, you can STOP.

As Church Lady (Dana Carvey) used to say, "Well, isn't that special." Except, unfortunately, we believed that we had to reply to these requests within 7 business days, so we jumped all over it and got it done. But I am happy for those of you that get to cut the process short.

Wonder if that means they're going to want us to look for those same requests under the new procedures once they decide what they are.

From an ABA listserv, this confirmation just in.

Today, The US Treasury Department announced a moratorium of the processing of requests from FinCEN under Section 314(a) of the USA Patriot Act. All covered financial institutions are to stop the processing of all previous requests. It is expected that the official notice will be disciminated by each institution's regulator today, Tuesday November 19, 2002, or tomorrow.