[zorrb]

Yeah, it is pretty hard to believe.

Personal anecdote. About eight years ago I knew a guy who had a small diner in Michigan and the weekly deposits came out to be just under $10k, so $8700 this week, $9500 the next week. Nothing nefarious, that's just what it happened to be. I guess after three months of this the bank closed his business' account for "suspicious activity".

[mike_hearn]

They thought he was "structuring". There's a $10k reporting limit for suspicious transactions. So obviously if you are doing something suspicious, you want to always go in under the limit. So now the real limit is lower than $10k and essentially arbitrary .... you really have no idea how you can use a bank account with cash without being classified as suspicious. Great system, huh.

[harryh]

Actually it does sound like a great system to not know exactly what being suspicious looks like. If the system was very precisely defined it would make it trivial for criminals to avoid suspicion by staying just on one side of a line.