[jldugger]

> Speaking as a layperson, I assume that being a 30-something living in New York who had $80,000 in savings and checking alone -- which she explicitly states in her article -- would be enough to qualify for a no-hold-up same day $50k withdrawal from a New York bank. Is that not the case?

I'm no banking expert, but I'm pretty sure no-hold same day withdrawals of that size need much more than that. I wouldn't be surprised if her family has contracted with Bank of America for private banking and family office services, which is usually economical around the $10M assets under management mark (wikipedia says 50M[1] but I've seen lower numbers cited in FatFIRE). In which case the savings and checking figure is essentially nominal, as the wealth is there, but tied up for estate planning (read: tax minimization) purposes; if someone needs money, family offices can set up credit lines. I imagine in that scenario they're basically paying themselves interest.

In any case I doubt any bank is willing to publicly state what the thresholds are in a way anyone could cite, for fear of scammers using that info against them or their clients.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_office

[danso]

That's one of the things I thought Patrick's article would shed more specific light on, e.g. is it necessary to be in that kind of rarified group (e.g. someone rich enough to have special services with the bank)? Or is being rich enough to own a $3M+ home enough?

The reason why I think the threshold may be much lower than what Patrick insinuates it to be, is because similar big cash scams have been reported by people seemingly much poorer than the NYMag columnist:

https://www.wate.com/news/top-stories/knoxville-woman-loses-...

> What happened next is tragic for Colleen as she went to her bank. “I told him how much I had in there and he told me to withdraw everything but the $700. I told the lady I need to withdraw $19,000. I said I needed it cash.” Colleen said.

$19,000 is of course less than $50k, but it's still well above the $10k anti-laundering reporting threshold, and it involves a victim in Knoxville for whom that $19k represented her "life savings", yet it seems the bank didn't stop her from a same-day total withdrawal.

(note: this Knoxville incident happened in Dec. 2024, so it's of course possible the victim is perpetrating a copycat fabrication after reading the NYMag article)