Policing for Profit Also Known As Civil Asset Forfeiture

[Dogmatique]

how so,, I read the stories about this,, plus I read the government webpages and formed my own opinion that is the same with the stories others have wrote.. I also took the time to explain how I myself came to that understanding....

im not a one man band,, many other have formed the same opinions.

what you need to work on is to take a class in politeness and respect,, also stop being a follower your actions along with dog in every thread is always predicable and repetitive "pack follower mentality" just an observation.

Tony honey, your tiny tantrums aren't really doing much for your credibility. Then again, you're already in the minuses there so that's probably moot.

If you need for us to dumb it down even further - and I'm not convinced that's actually possible - let us know.

In the meantime, I'll help you just a little bit.

why don't you explain to me this line from the government site that states all that is required for the bank to "suspect" is:

" is not the type of transaction that the particular customer would normally be expected to engage in" and that's regarding procedures for anything over 5000 dollars.
.

that right there,, after I read everything on both government sites is the one little line the sticks out for me..

You're telling us that if the sun is out and the sky is clear, it must be snowing.

now for me,,, I would happen to fit into that category, as I would normally not be expected to withdraw such a large amount of money, it would be unusual behavior for me. therefore I could very well be put under investigation. that's what the stories are about.

Well, if you walk into your bank looking very shifty, and the first thing you say to the teller is "Hey, I don't normally do this but... ", then I suppose you'd attract more than the usual attention, sure.

[Taxing Matters]

look its right here what the government told the banks to look for,,, so if you don't take large amounts of money out on a routine basis or you don't own a business you fit into what they look for as suspicious and you stand a very good chance of being investigated.

You don’t understand how this works. The SAR is based on the concept that banks and other financial institutions need to know their customers because banks are not supposed to facilitate illegal behavior. Banks cannot turn a blind eye to signs that their customers are using them for money laundering, organized crime, or any other sort of illegal activity. The SAR is designed to help ensure that criminals do not use financial institutions to facilitate their crimes. The SAR requires a great deal of information, including identifying the potential type of criminal activity the customer may be engaged in. The banks and Treasury have developed various indicators that help spot signs of various types of criminal activity. This is what the banks use to determine when to file a SAR. It takes more than just a simple withdrawal of cash from the account to trigger a SAR. These are not something that get filed with respect to the vast majority of bank transactions. Out of billions of bank transactions in 2012, there were a total of 860,858 SARs filed in 2012 by banks. Most of the filings were done by banks in NY and CA, and the majority of those reports concerned evidence of money laundering. Banks in PA filed just 28,750 SAR reports in 2012. Considering that PA has about 12.8 million people, you can see that SAR filings are done on only a very small fraction of customers. A bank is not going to do a SAR for a one time withdrawal of $5,000 in cash by without something else that indicates potential criminal activity.

And even when a SAR is filed, there is no guarantee that there will be any significant investigation of it by law enforcement. The feds screen the SARs and sort out those that may in fact indicate criminal activity worth checking into. The process is not instant. They don’t send out a SWAT team the instant they get one. Indeed, the SAR doesn't have to be filed the moment the bank has the information needed to determine a SAR is needed. The law requires that the bank file it within 30 days. The fears that the far right wing blogosphere puts out that if you take out $5,000 that you’ll be immediately investigated and the cash seized by asset forfeiture or on some other basis is simply unfounded. Those folks have no idea how this really works, yet their lack of knowledge doesn’t seem to stop them from playing Chicken Little and declaring the sky is falling, e.g. screaming that the government is swooping in to deprive us of all our rights — and our cash. It makes good reading for their blogs; their readers eat this stuff up because they don’t bother to question whether it’s really true.

[tonynewman]

ok,, let me ask you this,

do you know anything about mandatory SAR quotas the banks need to make, the banks are basically forced into reporting a said number of reports monthly,,, now it seems they want more reports or at the very least to make sure the quotas are filled so they lower the bar so to speak, would you agree with that?

[Dogmatique]

ok,, let me ask you this,

do you know anything about mandatory SAR quotas the banks need to make, the banks are basically forced into reporting a said number of reports monthly,,, now it seems they want more reports or at the very least to make sure the quotas are filled so they lower the bar so to speak, would you agree with that?

Somebody (you and... whoever it is you play with online) still isn't grasping the concept.

Banks are told they must report (ie, it is mandatory) every transaction involving $5000 or more

Banks are told they must investigate every transaction involving $5000 if it appears suspicious

Give it up. I refuse to believe somebody is actually this dense, hence you're doing nothing more than trolling.

- - - Updated - - -

You don’t understand how this works. The SAR is based on the concept that banks and other financial institutions need to know their customers because banks are not supposed to facilitate illegal behavior. Banks cannot turn a blind eye to signs that their customers are using them for money laundering, organized crime, or any other sort of illegal activity. The SAR is designed to help ensure that criminals do not use financial institutions to facilitate their crimes. The SAR requires a great deal of information, including identifying the potential type of criminal activity the customer may be engaged in. The banks and Treasury have developed various indicators that help spot signs of various types of criminal activity. This is what the banks use to determine when to file a SAR. It takes more than just a simple withdrawal of cash from the account to trigger a SAR. These are not something that get filed with respect to the vast majority of bank transactions. Out of billions of bank transactions in 2012, there were a total of 860,858 SARs filed in 2012 by banks. Most of the filings were done by banks in NY and CA, and the majority of those reports concerned evidence of money laundering. Banks in PA filed just 28,750 SAR reports in 2012. Considering that PA has about 12.8 million people, you can see that SAR filings are done on only a very small fraction of customers. A bank is not going to do a SAR for a one time withdrawal of $5,000 in cash by without something else that indicates potential criminal activity.

And even when a SAR is filed, there is no guarantee that there will be any significant investigation of it by law enforcement. The feds screen the SARs and sort out those that may in fact indicate criminal activity worth checking into. The process is not instant. They don’t send out a SWAT team the instant they get one. Indeed, the SAR doesn't have to be filed the moment the bank has the information needed to determine a SAR is needed. The law requires that the bank file it within 30 days. The fears that the far right wing blogosphere puts out that if you take out $5,000 that you’ll be immediately investigated and the cash seized by asset forfeiture or on some other basis is simply unfounded. Those folks have no idea how this really works, yet their lack of knowledge doesn’t seem to stop them from playing Chicken Little and declaring the sky is falling, e.g. screaming that the government is swooping in to deprive us of all our rights — and our cash. It makes good reading for their blogs; their readers eat this stuff up because they don’t bother to question whether it’s really true.

And the heavens rain down a healthy and much-needed dose of reality.

Thank you!

[cbg]

Tax has the patience of a saint.

[Dogmatique]

Tax has the patience of a saint.

No kidding. Special tea, crumpets and jam scones with clotted cream, I say!

[Taxing Matters]

ok,, let me ask you this,

do you know anything about mandatory SAR quotas the banks need to make, the banks are basically forced into reporting a said number of reports monthly,,, now it seems they want more reports or at the very least to make sure the quotas are filled so they lower the bar so to speak, would you agree with that?

No, I do not agree with that. First, there is nothing anywhere in any of the SAR rules or guidance provided to the banks that calls for a quota on SARs. Where the right-wing bloggers got that idea I don’t know.

Second, the notion of a quota on a SAR is silly. The whole point is to report activity that is suspicious. You cannot put a realisitic quota on that. No one knows which banks will encounter suspicious activity and when it will occur. Some banks are more likely to be approached by money launderers than others, for example. Crime and the related activity to it varies from place to place. You cannot predict it ahead of time. So, if you set quotas that the banks had to meet, they may well have make ficticious SARs to meet the quota. That’s exactly what the feds do NOT want because then they may end up using valuable resources investigating something that is bogus from the start. They want to find real criminal activity; not just generate tons of worthless reports to sit on their computers.

The SAR filing numbers bear this out. If there were quotas that the banks had to meet the filing numbers would be much more uniform across the country as each bank would be filling its set quota. But the numbers show that the filings vary widely. In some places few or no SARs are filed. In other places a lot more. This is what you’d expect when criminal activity varies widely, too, with some places having signficantly more financial crimes than others.

This idea of a quota is another one of those unfounded rumors of the far right blogosphere. If you want to start really learning the truth, the first step is stop reading those blogs that feed you misinformation and lies. They are giving you a very distorted view of how things really work.

[Dogmatique]

No, I do not agree with that. First, there is nothing anywhere in any of the SAR rules or guidance provided to the banks that calls for a quota on SARs. Where the right-wing bloggers got that idea I don’t know.

Second, the notion of a quota on a SAR is silly. The whole point is to report activity that is suspicious. You cannot put a realisitic quota on that. No one knows which banks will encounter suspicious activity and when it will occur. Some banks are more likely to be approached by money launderers than others, for example. Crime and the related activity to it varies from place to place. You cannot predict it ahead of time. So, if you set quotas that the banks had to meet, they may well have make ficticious SARs to meet the quota. That’s exactly what the feds do NOT want because then they may end up using valuable resources investigating something that is bogus from the start. They want to find real criminal activity; not just generate tons of worthless reports to sit on their computers.

The SAR filing numbers bear this out. If there were quotas that the banks had to meet the filing numbers would be much more uniform across the country as each bank would be filling its set quota. But the numbers show that the filings vary widely. In some places few or no SARs are filed. In other places a lot more. This is what you’d expect when criminal activity varies widely, too, with some places having signficantly more financial crimes than others.

This idea of a quota is another one of those unfounded rumors of the far right blogosphere. If you want to start really learning the truth, the first step is stop reading those blogs that feed you misinformation and lies. They are giving you a very distorted view of how things really work.

On a more serious note, I truly do hope that tony listens to you.

I can understand his hating of cbg and myself.

But you? He has no argument with you. You are though speaking the truth, so it may only be a short time before you're also on tony's "la la la I can't hear you" list.

[Taxing Matters]

But you? He has no argument with you. You are though speaking the truth, so it may only be a short time before you're also on tony's "la la la I can't hear you" list.

You may be right, but still I try to help people out of fantasyland and back to reality whenever I can. I’ve engaged in lots of similar discussions with the tax protest crowd, too. They also tend to be so convinced they are right that they won’t listen to facts or reason. Talking with many of them is just an exercise in frustration.

But every once in awhile I find someone who can set aside his/her own ingrained beliefs long enough to actually look at the facts and the law logically and realize that they’d been taken in by those tax protest groups and that their beliefs were mistaken. It is the satisfaction of helping these few out of the fantasyland and back to the real world that makes putting up with the rest of it worthwhile.

[harrylime]

ok,, let me ask you this,

do you know anything about mandatory SAR quotas the banks need to make, the banks are basically forced into reporting a said number of reports monthly,,, now it seems they want more reports or at the very least to make sure the quotas are filled so they lower the bar so to speak, would you agree with that?

And where did you come up with this? Alex Jones?