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Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

theguardian.com

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Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#101

Post by kjs3 »

safog wrote: post #70
sharkweek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former bank teller let me tell you all the brilliant ways people would try to get around this. * Depositing $9,999 cash (yeah, still gonna report that) * Depositing random X,000 cash increments across multiple transactions (yeah, still going to report that) * Making cash deposits across multiple locations in the same day/week (as if the computer didn’t alert us to multiple cash deposits)

Curious - how do people who work cash jobs handle this or if your system flags them. I pay our cleaner say $100 in cash. Pretty sure they don't report that to the IRS or pay taxes on it. What happens if they deposit say 2-3k / mo spread across several days? (~30k / yr in total?)

The financial fraud teams have models of what cash-based businesses 'should' look like. They don't, per se, care if these folks aren't paying taxes (the IRS does, and they have their own models). The Bank is looking more for things like "I'm a house cleaner...depositing $250k+ a year" (possible, but unlikely) or "I've been depositing 2-3k a month for a couple of years and suddenly I'm depositing 10-20k a month".

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#102

Post by lixtra »

vmception wrote: post #73
defterGoose wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I just ask...WTAF are you talking about? Because you sound like a troll.

That a suspicious activity report is not indication of a crime, anything suspicious, and a lot of them get filed many times automatically

I would appreciate if you could point to some actual data (number of SARs per year in country, false positives...).

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#103

Post by kjs3 »

starkred wrote: post #72
sharkweek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former bank teller let me tell you all the brilliant ways people would try to get around this. * Depositing $9,999 cash (yeah, still gonna report that) * Depositing random X,000 cash increments across multiple transactions (yeah, still going to report that) * Making cash deposits across multiple locations in the same day/week (as if the computer didn’t alert us to multiple cash deposits)

You've crushed the dreams of a lot of people who get their tax tips from anonymous internet posters. "Deposit $9,999 to fool the IRS" is up there with "Consult with top divorce lawyers to keep them from representing you spouse" in the Hall of Bad Legal Advice.

Yeah...there's not a COBOL program running someplace saying IF DEPOSIT IS EQUAL TO 9999.00 THEN FLAG-IT. There's some pretty sophisticated machine learning work being done here, and all the major banks these days have a data science team working the problem.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#104

Post by merricksb »

Previous discussions of this topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24535241 (535 points/220 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24535903 (131 points/16 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24539132 (110 points/26 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24536630 (83 points)

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#105

Post by op03 »

JauntTrooper wrote: post #50
syspec wrote: post #4

> In a statement released earlier this month FinCEN condemned the disclosure of the leaked documents and said it had referred the matter to the US Department of Justice. > “The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed suspicious activity reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several yea…

I work at a bank, and we get training on this regularly. One of the main reasons FinCEN requires strict confidentiality on SARs is to not tip off the account owners that they're being watched/investigated. Investigators will often monitor the accounts to gather enough evidence to prosecute them or to gain intel into broader criminal networks. Regulators also rightfully don't want money launderers to know the playbook…

This a regulator leaking the data.

Not a bank employee leaking the data.

Why would they leak it? Cause they know the system is fubar.

The simple question to ask is how many people are needed to monitor the system.

Now you have one clown after another saying the banks file zillions of reports every day.

Thats not the issue. Someone has to monitor all that.

And when that someone realizes they arent making a dent, given the volumes, they get sick of the pointlessness and leak the DB.

This is going to keep happening. Swiss leaks, Panama papers, libor etc etc

We have learnt how to scale things up over the last 20 year exponentially.

But oversight can't scale exponentially.

It's unsustainable and pressure will build to ridiculous levels on regulators and law enforcement.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#106

Post by paranorman »

cycomanic wrote: post #97

There seems to be a serious amount of astroturfing going on here there's no other way to explain all these "every 10k transaction generates a SAR... all these things might be harmless, maybe some startup needed some cash liquidity..." First these are 2000 SARs over a period of 8 years, so if SARs get filled very often (I have no idea if they do), then this would be a very select few of them. Maybe someone already did…

Do the accounts posting this information look suspicious? I’m not doubting your claim at all, merely curious about the prevalence of astroturfing on HN.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#107

Post by luckylion »

mabbo wrote: post #86
luckylion wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "more than 2000" SARs are totaling $2tn, I don't think there's a lot of "Grandma Jones got a new bed and finally decided to trust the bank with her $11k secret savings". > It's up to the US FINCEN to decide if a crime took place and to handle it accordingly. You decide if you trust them or not, but that is their role in this. Who watches the watchmen?

The same can be said for the CIA, FBI, Justice Department, etc. If you have a good suggestion for how one can trust their government to have secrets, but also not do bad things, please share it.

The best I can come up with is having the press being their opposition that pokes and prods and calls them out when they see wrong being done. That's what this is, essentially. For maximum harm, you could simple release to the public and spread propaganda. For critical evaluation, leaking to the press is quite normal, I believe.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#108

Post by starkred »

kjs3 wrote: post #103
starkred wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've crushed the dreams of a lot of people who get their tax tips from anonymous internet posters. "Deposit $9,999 to fool the IRS" is up there with "Consult with top divorce lawyers to keep them from representing you spouse" in the Hall of Bad Legal Advice.

Yeah...there's not a COBOL program running someplace saying IF DEPOSIT IS EQUAL TO 9999.00 THEN FLAG-IT. There's some pretty sophisticated machine learning work being done here, and all the major banks these days have a data science team working the problem.

Sadly there probably is such a COBOL program but it's only going to be the first in line of a lot of systems looking for fraud.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#109

Post by Gibbon1 »

starkred wrote: post #41
me_me_me wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, but Collateral Damage, Snowden panama papers... Imagine if they spend 10% of resources that they spent going after leakers punishing real perpetrators.

They may be going after the real perpetrators. If they are, they probably don't want the perpetrators to know how much information they have. If so, their cases may have just been blown apart by these leaks, and the perpetrators are even less likely to get persecuted.

I could dig it up, but there was a leak about ten years ago where literally thousands of high wealth individuals were caught out hiding money from the IRS. And a a large US money manager was found to be helping thing them.

What happened?

Some people had to pay fines. The company paid a small fine with no charges filed. Leaker went to prison.

The system is completely corrupt.

Re: Leak reveals $2T of possibly corrupt US financial activity

#110

Post by vmception »

lixtra wrote: post #102
vmception wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That a suspicious activity report is not indication of a crime, anything suspicious, and a lot of them get filed many times automatically

I would appreciate if you could point to some actual data (number of SARs per year in country, false positives...).

I just don't find your cognitive dissonance to be relevant.

You’re asking for something to be proved - or supporting evidence that requires a whole dissertation - because your exposure is starting from a position that is fundamentally wrong.

“Suspicious” is a misnomer referring to an automatic reporting threshold, that in fewer additional circumstances allows for discretion in filing. The end.

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