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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#191

Post by reaperman »

musictubes wrote: post #180
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

I moved from the US to Yemen from 2006-2008. After I got the travel details figured out I realized I would need some way of getting money while I was there. Freaked out for a bit, figured that with the war on terror ongoing it would prove to be incredibly difficult. Turns out my ATM card worked fine while I was over there. I did let the bank know I would be there and I kept my address in the US though. My card got lo…

I got put on a watch list during my time in Saudi and Abu Dhabi. Didnt affect my banking but every plane ticket i got for years had “SSSS”[0] printed/sharpied on it and all my luggage would get a secondary hand-search at every stop immediately pre-boarding both domestically and internationally.

I am just average white US citizen who was working on oil rigs but most likely some of my whatsapp/facebook/iMessage contacts were related to families involved in dissidence against the Saudi government (because the oil region of Saudi is populated by a minority Shia group that is severely underrepresented in governance). Their mosques also had individuals with mental health issues who occasionally try to bomb the mosques in a very, very similar parallel to school shooters back home here in USA.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#192

Post by csomar »

nanidin wrote: post #156
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends. The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

2023 is very different to 2012. I remember back in the day you can open a paypal account with only an email and receive/send money with it. No kyc required.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#193

Post by TacticalCoder »

krupan wrote: post #70

The crazy thing to me in all this is that the types and amounts of transactions you make with your money and the bank is not criminal and never could be. It could however be a technique used to hide things that are criminal like fraud or theft. Somehow somewhere along the way we as a society decided we were ok with criminalizing the types of transactions that can be used to hide crime. That to me should have been a c…

> Somehow somewhere along the way we as a society decided we were ok with criminalizing the types of transactions that can be used to hide crime. That to me should have been a clear step in the wrong direction.

Totally wrong direction.

> "Money laundering" (however that is defined) should not be a crime. Theft, fraud, etc. should be.

This goes back to this weird fetishism where people think it was oh-so-cool to arrest and convict Al Capone for "not paying taxes" instead of convicting him for his actual crimes.

A society which thinks its cool to send people to jail for tax evasion instead of sending them to jail for organized crime is a failed society.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#194

Post by kornhole »

raincom wrote: post #130
creer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No such thing as "an algorithm run amuck" - more like "another department run amuck". Someone programmed the thing, someone is running it deliberately.

Regulators fined Chase and other big banks for "weak controls". One way to show that these big banks have "strong controls" is to change parameters for these algorithms. Many legitimate transactions fall under structuring, layering, smurfing, laundering. After all, any goal of money laundering is to make their transactions appear "legitimate". Now almost all transactions (except for big businesses and people with few…

All the examples cited in the article were with big banks who are probably the ones most likely to be employing these automated systems and getting pressure from regulators. For the benefit of decentralization and avoidance of CBDC's I am moving my accounts more to the smaller regional banks.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#195

Post by dclowd9901 »

musictubes wrote: post #180
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

I moved from the US to Yemen from 2006-2008. After I got the travel details figured out I realized I would need some way of getting money while I was there. Freaked out for a bit, figured that with the war on terror ongoing it would prove to be incredibly difficult. Turns out my ATM card worked fine while I was over there. I did let the bank know I would be there and I kept my address in the US though. My card got lo…

Yeesh. Do you have any trouble flying these days? Your travel destinations are like a “who’s who” of red flag destinations.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#196

Post by gruez »

advael wrote: post #162

I'm somewhat surprised no one here views this as an automated decisionmaking problem It's increasingly clear that automating important decisions like this is causing a lot of harm while removing most forms of recourse available to those affected. Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself: Require decisio…

>Coupled with the way automated decisions are used to perform and then launder fraud on a massive scale, maybe we should target laws at the automation itself [...]

how about we stop at the actual source by not having the government launder the task of law enforcement to third parties? The article makes it pretty clear that banks aren't exiting customers for fun. They're doing it because they have to, on pain of facing regulatory action.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#197

Post by Hnrobert42 »

gnicholas wrote: post #142
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

What qualifies as an "extended amount of time overseas"? If you go on a vacation for 6-8 weeks, does that get you in trouble? I would think banks would want to keep big spenders who can afford months-long international travel.

I travel overseas a lot to Europe and Asia anywhere from a few weeks to almost a year. I VPN, but not always back to the US. I use wise.com. I kept my US address.

I’ve had zero problems. I think we’re all getting excited about anecdotes.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#198

Post by nostrademons »

advael wrote: post #167
obviouslynotme wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people are totalitarian in a few ways. Some people hate drugs. Everyone hates crime. The homeless cause social issues. Some people want their religion enforced. Some people hate foreigners. Most people grant these powers to the government hoping to get their pet peeve taken care of, and are surprised when the government not only doesn't do what they promised, but turn those powers onto its own favorite victims i…

I don't see any of those "pet peeves" as justifying totalitarian policy, and people who do are useful idiots for authoritarian projects

I think that was the point. There are a lot of useful idiots out there.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#199

Post by raincom »

pipes wrote: post #22
pauldenton wrote: post #13

https://youtu.be/B9IrNcv_OdM Nigel Farage brought a lot of attention to the Debanking scandal

And the regulator pretty much said it is all fine, nothing to see here!

The regulator didn't go through Nigel's case at all, as 'it is understood that the data does not cover his case, given that the bank never followed through with the closure' [1]. What FCA found that banks never debanked people based primarily on political beliefs[1]. However, Banks can use political beliefs secondarily to debank, and that's what Natwest did. Nagel sought documents from Natwest using Subject Access Request, there it is "found that an internal committee had deemed his views did not align with the bank's own. This formed part of the basis for cutting him, the document showed, alongside commercial considerations." [2]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/19/nigel-farag...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/natwest-meets-quart...

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