Without getting into the weeds now, though I hope to have time in the near future, the simple explanation is what constitutes a red flag is any non lefty looney activity. Obama openly bragged about how he as president had his admin going after firearm manufacturers and sellers by forcing financial institutions to debank them. They also used the Environmental Protection Agency to shut down at least 1 lead smelter that supplied ammunition manufactures.
There is a history in the U.S. of the government designating certain groups, and activities as, shall we say “nonprefreable” leading to debunking and other negative consequences for the targeted p. This why the DoJ labeling parents who speak out against lefty looney policies at school board meetings, anti abortion groups and the Catholic Church in general with the various terms they applied to each is such a huge deal; once thus labeled the whole of the federal bureaucracy and increasing amounts of State bureaucracies and private industry are compelled to take action, such as debanking.
However, for the banks to say that they are not debanking is disingenuous in the extreme. This is not new, has been going on at least since Obama. They know what’s going on but choose to remain silent. Now that they are publicly called out, they use obscure the facts. Given the actions of some of these huge banks, it is apparent that many employed within are not merely doing what they believe they must to survive, do as they are told and keep quiet about it, but a giddy with glee as they debank those whose politics they oppose.
They also certainly are aware of “bank freeze out” US persons abroad have to deal with in certain countries. They know. They allow it. They do not inform their customers of it. They are dirty.
The claim is not that they are not debanking, it is that they are not debanking based on politics. Which is why I explain how they could be sort of telling the truth but not really
I had a whole rant about FATCA which I took out because of space and lack of relevance
Yes, but we both know that it ain’t lefty loonies who are being debanked. That would be front page, above the fold news if it ever happened to a major dem donor. Hell, they scarcely report on dem donors or associates who are arrested for any crime and when they do, their affiliation with the left is left out while the opposite is true for those not on the left. To me the claim that they are not debanking based upon politics is the same as saying they are not debanking.
I hope you saved the FATCA rant for another post. Not enough are even aware of it and too few rant about it. I would to read what you specifically but whatever any non US citizen who is aware of it has to say on the subject. Have you been claimed as a “US person”?
I have lived in the US and hence have an SSN and paid US taxes so I was some kind of US person. California may technically still think I am - they did after all ask me to show up for jury duty after I'd left the country, see https://freethepeople.org/voter-fraud-in-the-us-an-anecdote/
I was informed once, extremely unofficially, by a non-US financial organization that if I changed my address to a US address that would effectively require them to cease doing business with me
Subsequently I paid considerable attention to what addresses various businesses use to contact me and ensured that US based ones had a US address and non-US ones had a non-US address
Yep, you are a US Person. You are in an even worse shape than I am for I, at least theoretically, can renounce US citizenship and after certain criteria are met, be free of them. There is nothing you have that you can give up and be free of them, sadly. And yes, having connections with the US or financial relationships with its citizens is best avoided lest your financial institutions drop you because they do not want the reporting requirements that come with doing business with us.
California is a strange place. While there in the navy stationed in San Diego, though allowed, we were cautioned against getting a Cali issued driver’s license. Once you have one of these for a certain period of time, California will extract money from your paycheck as a road use tax even after you have officially left the state and have a DL issued by another state. Frankly, I did not believe it at the time but had a DL from my home state anyway. I would later learn that this is true. I still do not know the mechanism nor why other state would allow California to tax their residents. Kinda like a mini FATCA/FBAR/CBT system but for California. I would later learn that this also applies to State taxes and that in this regard, New York is little different. Again, unfathomable that any state would send taxes and information on any of their residents that have not even left their state in a given year to any other state.
I don't buy it Francis. Innocent until proven guilty.
Until and unless the money deposited is proven ill gotten gains, it's the depositor's money.
The fact that money is deposited without an explanation where came from is not proof or even a suggestion of wrongdoing. If say, on a regular basis I deposited between ten or twenty thousand dollars in to my account at 4:59 p.m. every Friday, it is possible I'm running book, taking, illegal bets. It is also possible I'm a remittance man with an aunt sending me money each week to stay well away. I could also be any retailer depositing the week's profit. It should not be the back's business to police, report, inquire, suggest or guess the source of the funds.
Bankers should bank, the police should police. If someone is suspected, if there is sufficient evidence of possible criminal activity, of wrongdoing, a judge approved search warrant to review a person's banking records may well be in order.
However lack of knowledge o f one's source of funds does not prove or, in my opinion even suggest a crime has been committed.
Not that it will change the way banks and governments do business, Francis, but that my take on it. Grin.
Well, in that case we need to get rid of the laws that say a bank is liable when their customers are criminals and the bank did nothing to stop it.
Wasn't that the George Carlin routine? The way to fight the war drugs is to crucify the bankers? Well, congratulations, debanking is what the bankers do to avoid being punished for going Sgt. Schultz.
There is another motive to consider. More regulations that require more costs to the bank drive out small local banks and put pressure on regional banks. The huge institutions just comply, automate and probably lobby for more regulations because the regs are good for their business in the long run.
Good for big business and good for government control.
3 or 4 large banks the government finds easy to manage, thirty or forty thousand small banks, ungovernable, a marketplace, success or failure depends on satisfying the customers, not the regulators.
Hi, I'm the friend. A few more loosely associated thoughts:
One way to sell banks on changing SAR confidentiality rules is that it can help them. I had a case where the customer had picked up a gambling addiction. He'd drained his accounts and was accumulating credit card debt. He was also an account manager at another one of the big multinational banks. To alert that bank that one of their employees was a major fraud risk would have been illegal though. And our job wasn't to punish people for being bad with their finances but to catch money laundering. No SAR.
To take up a major issue of the day, I'd see the impacts of illegal immigration in potential fraud cases. Legitimate banks require proof of identity, so one citizen/ legal resident would cash a bunch of checks for his coworkers and then pay them back with a peer-to-peer service like Venmo, Zelle, or CashApp. In fact, part of what triggered the investigation of the mother cashing her sons' checks was that their last name was Hispanic.
The banks are woefully unprepared for how people use peer-to-peer banking services. Another common pattern was the person using P2P services to run a business without needing to comply with all the rules for small business accounts. But our job was anti-money-laundering and fraud investigation, not tax evasion, so no SAR.
A fun story on how banks aren't quite used to the modern world: one account was flagged because this twenty-something was withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars, but his listed job was waiter. I look at the deposit history: several hundred dollars every day from Google Adsense. I google him, and yep ... he's a TikTok/YouTube star. No SAR.
Another fun no SAR case: woman comes in and deposits several thousand dollars in small bills. Teller flagged it as suspicious. Listed occupation? Exotic dancer.
The most sad cases were the elder abuse ones. These not only got a SAR but another elder abuse form. I did see one happy ending though: adult daughter took out a $20K signature loan pretending to be her elder mother. Mother went to the bank, and the tellers helpfully asked why she hadn't been making payments. "What signature loan?" She replied. Well, in the three days between the branch filing the report and it getting to me, there was a $20K transfer from daughter's account to mother's. Go little old lady!
"The banks are woefully unprepared for how people use peer-to-peer banking services. Another common pattern was the person using P2P services to run a business without needing to comply with all the rules for small business accounts. But our job was anti-money-laundering and fraud investigation, not tax evasion, so no SAR."
That's where a bunch of crypto entrepreneurs get caught and (eventually) debanked. At some point they cross over the line from stuff the bank can ignore (tax evasion) to stuff it can't (looks like money laundering)
Without getting into the weeds now, though I hope to have time in the near future, the simple explanation is what constitutes a red flag is any non lefty looney activity. Obama openly bragged about how he as president had his admin going after firearm manufacturers and sellers by forcing financial institutions to debank them. They also used the Environmental Protection Agency to shut down at least 1 lead smelter that supplied ammunition manufactures.
There is a history in the U.S. of the government designating certain groups, and activities as, shall we say “nonprefreable” leading to debunking and other negative consequences for the targeted p. This why the DoJ labeling parents who speak out against lefty looney policies at school board meetings, anti abortion groups and the Catholic Church in general with the various terms they applied to each is such a huge deal; once thus labeled the whole of the federal bureaucracy and increasing amounts of State bureaucracies and private industry are compelled to take action, such as debanking.
However, for the banks to say that they are not debanking is disingenuous in the extreme. This is not new, has been going on at least since Obama. They know what’s going on but choose to remain silent. Now that they are publicly called out, they use obscure the facts. Given the actions of some of these huge banks, it is apparent that many employed within are not merely doing what they believe they must to survive, do as they are told and keep quiet about it, but a giddy with glee as they debank those whose politics they oppose.
They also certainly are aware of “bank freeze out” US persons abroad have to deal with in certain countries. They know. They allow it. They do not inform their customers of it. They are dirty.
The claim is not that they are not debanking, it is that they are not debanking based on politics. Which is why I explain how they could be sort of telling the truth but not really
I had a whole rant about FATCA which I took out because of space and lack of relevance
Yes, but we both know that it ain’t lefty loonies who are being debanked. That would be front page, above the fold news if it ever happened to a major dem donor. Hell, they scarcely report on dem donors or associates who are arrested for any crime and when they do, their affiliation with the left is left out while the opposite is true for those not on the left. To me the claim that they are not debanking based upon politics is the same as saying they are not debanking.
I hope you saved the FATCA rant for another post. Not enough are even aware of it and too few rant about it. I would to read what you specifically but whatever any non US citizen who is aware of it has to say on the subject. Have you been claimed as a “US person”?
I have lived in the US and hence have an SSN and paid US taxes so I was some kind of US person. California may technically still think I am - they did after all ask me to show up for jury duty after I'd left the country, see https://freethepeople.org/voter-fraud-in-the-us-an-anecdote/
I was informed once, extremely unofficially, by a non-US financial organization that if I changed my address to a US address that would effectively require them to cease doing business with me
Subsequently I paid considerable attention to what addresses various businesses use to contact me and ensured that US based ones had a US address and non-US ones had a non-US address
Yep, you are a US Person. You are in an even worse shape than I am for I, at least theoretically, can renounce US citizenship and after certain criteria are met, be free of them. There is nothing you have that you can give up and be free of them, sadly. And yes, having connections with the US or financial relationships with its citizens is best avoided lest your financial institutions drop you because they do not want the reporting requirements that come with doing business with us.
California is a strange place. While there in the navy stationed in San Diego, though allowed, we were cautioned against getting a Cali issued driver’s license. Once you have one of these for a certain period of time, California will extract money from your paycheck as a road use tax even after you have officially left the state and have a DL issued by another state. Frankly, I did not believe it at the time but had a DL from my home state anyway. I would later learn that this is true. I still do not know the mechanism nor why other state would allow California to tax their residents. Kinda like a mini FATCA/FBAR/CBT system but for California. I would later learn that this also applies to State taxes and that in this regard, New York is little different. Again, unfathomable that any state would send taxes and information on any of their residents that have not even left their state in a given year to any other state.
I think you've just confessed to a crime.
statute of limitations almost certainly applies
Call me whatever but debanking is criminal and wrong, period.
It should be criminal or at least potentially. It certainly isn't today, which is the problem
I don't buy it Francis. Innocent until proven guilty.
Until and unless the money deposited is proven ill gotten gains, it's the depositor's money.
The fact that money is deposited without an explanation where came from is not proof or even a suggestion of wrongdoing. If say, on a regular basis I deposited between ten or twenty thousand dollars in to my account at 4:59 p.m. every Friday, it is possible I'm running book, taking, illegal bets. It is also possible I'm a remittance man with an aunt sending me money each week to stay well away. I could also be any retailer depositing the week's profit. It should not be the back's business to police, report, inquire, suggest or guess the source of the funds.
Bankers should bank, the police should police. If someone is suspected, if there is sufficient evidence of possible criminal activity, of wrongdoing, a judge approved search warrant to review a person's banking records may well be in order.
However lack of knowledge o f one's source of funds does not prove or, in my opinion even suggest a crime has been committed.
Not that it will change the way banks and governments do business, Francis, but that my take on it. Grin.
Well, in that case we need to get rid of the laws that say a bank is liable when their customers are criminals and the bank did nothing to stop it.
Wasn't that the George Carlin routine? The way to fight the war drugs is to crucify the bankers? Well, congratulations, debanking is what the bankers do to avoid being punished for going Sgt. Schultz.
Why yes we should rid ourselves of such laws. Bankers should bank, not police.
There is another motive to consider. More regulations that require more costs to the bank drive out small local banks and put pressure on regional banks. The huge institutions just comply, automate and probably lobby for more regulations because the regs are good for their business in the long run.
Good for big business and good for government control.
3 or 4 large banks the government finds easy to manage, thirty or forty thousand small banks, ungovernable, a marketplace, success or failure depends on satisfying the customers, not the regulators.
yep regulatory capture by large enterprises is commonplace, for sure it applies to banking
Hi, I'm the friend. A few more loosely associated thoughts:
One way to sell banks on changing SAR confidentiality rules is that it can help them. I had a case where the customer had picked up a gambling addiction. He'd drained his accounts and was accumulating credit card debt. He was also an account manager at another one of the big multinational banks. To alert that bank that one of their employees was a major fraud risk would have been illegal though. And our job wasn't to punish people for being bad with their finances but to catch money laundering. No SAR.
To take up a major issue of the day, I'd see the impacts of illegal immigration in potential fraud cases. Legitimate banks require proof of identity, so one citizen/ legal resident would cash a bunch of checks for his coworkers and then pay them back with a peer-to-peer service like Venmo, Zelle, or CashApp. In fact, part of what triggered the investigation of the mother cashing her sons' checks was that their last name was Hispanic.
The banks are woefully unprepared for how people use peer-to-peer banking services. Another common pattern was the person using P2P services to run a business without needing to comply with all the rules for small business accounts. But our job was anti-money-laundering and fraud investigation, not tax evasion, so no SAR.
A fun story on how banks aren't quite used to the modern world: one account was flagged because this twenty-something was withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars, but his listed job was waiter. I look at the deposit history: several hundred dollars every day from Google Adsense. I google him, and yep ... he's a TikTok/YouTube star. No SAR.
Another fun no SAR case: woman comes in and deposits several thousand dollars in small bills. Teller flagged it as suspicious. Listed occupation? Exotic dancer.
The most sad cases were the elder abuse ones. These not only got a SAR but another elder abuse form. I did see one happy ending though: adult daughter took out a $20K signature loan pretending to be her elder mother. Mother went to the bank, and the tellers helpfully asked why she hadn't been making payments. "What signature loan?" She replied. Well, in the three days between the branch filing the report and it getting to me, there was a $20K transfer from daughter's account to mother's. Go little old lady!
"The banks are woefully unprepared for how people use peer-to-peer banking services. Another common pattern was the person using P2P services to run a business without needing to comply with all the rules for small business accounts. But our job was anti-money-laundering and fraud investigation, not tax evasion, so no SAR."
That's where a bunch of crypto entrepreneurs get caught and (eventually) debanked. At some point they cross over the line from stuff the bank can ignore (tax evasion) to stuff it can't (looks like money laundering)