[ajross]

That's moving the goalposts. The point upthread was that splitting a single deposit made you "a criminal guilty of structuring".

But yeah, sorta: if you are repeatedly splitting such deposits in exactly the way needed to avoid reporting and scrutiny, and don't have a valid non-structuring explanation, those facts are going to go a long way toward proving intent in the minds of a jury. Would you seriously argue otherwise?

[valuearb]

Maybe I structure my deposits because I don’t feel safe carrying $10,000+ to the bank. So five times a week I’m depositing $5k in the bank, until the DA seizes my businesses working capital to put me out of business and you on the jury vote to convict me because my behavior was “repeated”?

[true_religion]

Not feeling safe is a valid reason to avoid large physical cash deposits. Many businesses do the same. I doubt a jury would convict.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Not feeling safe is a valid reason to avoid large physical cash deposits.

It's a reason shared by everyone. It's even true for drug dealers laundering their drug money. If that's a valid reason then who could be charged under this law?

That's the problem with the laws against money laundering. They prohibit things that are perfectly innocuous and done by honest people for legitimate reasons. They give prosecutors something to charge anyone they don't like with, even though thousands of other businesses are doing exactly the same thing without being charged because the prosecutors don't care about them.

It's nothing but an excuse to charge someone with something when you can't prove the thing they're actually supposed to be guilty of.

[CryptoPunk]

>It's nothing but an excuse to charge someone with something when you can't prove the thing they're actually supposed to be guilty of

This is exactly it.

If you want to stop a drug dealer, then prove they are dealing drugs, and put them in prison for that.

But it's too hard to prove they're dealing drugs, so create a law that criminalizes something that could potentially help a drug dealer cover his/her tracks, like concealing large transfers from the government. Now all of a sudden a new category of crime has been created that affects far more than drug dealers.

Anti-money-laundering laws are a blunt instrument for fighting crime that restricts the rights of millions of innocent people, in the name of stopping a small population of criminals.