Frequent cash withdrawals land Springfield man in court

It's insane that 10 years in prison is the potential penalty. No wonder the US "leads" the world with it's prison population.

I'm not sure what kind of reporting news-leader.com generally does, but I feel like most of this story is missing.

Sure, he was structuring, which seems as ridiculous as 'precrime' to me. But why was the guy trying to flout reporting requirements? Why were they looking in to him? I'm positive that my bank transaction history would, at times, look odd- especially as I was ramping up to buy a house and move to a different state while starting a new company. Also, my credit union was always in Oregon, even when I wasn't- which lead to weird contortions like mailing myself a $5,000 check and a $2,500 check to then snap check them in to my business account with the same credit union because I hadn't taken the time to link them properly yet and the max you can snapcheck is $5K, and I didn't want to take the time to find a partner branch.

Maybe someone looked into it behind the scenes, maybe they didn't. Either way, my money never got frozen and I never got in trouble. Why? Because I wasn't up to no good. I'm not touting the "if you've got nothing to hide..." crap about being happy to give up my liberties, but in general, even when they're stomping all over our constitution you don't go to jail for no reason.

He admitted to structuring, why is it surprising he was convicted?

Yeah. American prisons are overflowing with guys who got caught pulling $220k out of the bank in a structured fashion. This is the real source of our prison overcrowding.