With the demise of BB\/Serve I think it is time to take a moment from our regularly scheduled programing and discuss some pitfalls that people should be reminded of, or learn about for the first time. \u00a0The days of easy MS are temporarily over so let’s discuss about how we can avoid getting ourselves in trouble by doing stupid shit.<\/p>\n
Unless you were living under a rock last week, you probably heard about the\u00a0Pointchaser<\/a>\u00a0structuring drama. \u00a0She offered this advice in a post last week.<\/p>\n This one is tricky and could cause a lot of trouble if you go about it wrong. I try to limit my monthly money order deposits to $9,000 across two checking accounts. Federal law requires banks to report suspicious activity, like large deposits that exceed your monthly income. Any deposit of $10,000 or more gets reported to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), but I\u2019ve read that if you split up $10,000 worth of deposits within 30 days, it may still\u00a0get reported. Obviously, I\u2019m not doing anything illegal, but I\u2019d rather avoid the hassles of being investigated for money laundering, so I keep my deposits under $10,000 per month just to be safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The post highlights a particular pitfall with money orders.\u00a0 The pitfall is a\u00a0federal crime called, structuring. The IRS Manual <\/a>has a good explanation of\u00a0it and if you are doing MOs it is a must read. \u00a0Essentially, structuring is making bank deposits in a manner that avoids the $10,000 reporting requirement. \u00a0Pointchaser took down the offending advice after receiving a fair dose of criticism.<\/p>\n In defense of Pointchaser\u00a0I will say one thing. \u00a0The reporting law applies to cash deposits. \u00a0I am not 100% sure if money orders are treated the same as cash deposits for the purposes of reporting. \u00a0In fact my wife used to work in a credit union and is familiar with the reporting requirements. \u00a0She says that the reporting requirements only apply to cash and not money orders. \u00a0Still, I would err on the side of caution with this one. \u00a0Don’t deposit MOs into your bank account. If you do, don’t structure them.\u00a0 You are much better off going into the local branch of whatever bank’s credit card you need to pay off and use the MO to pay the bill. \u00a0I for one am on the MO sideline. \u00a0It is not worth the hassles\u00a0for me.<\/p>\n Speaking of Money order hassles, did you all see this tweet from Tahsir?<\/p>\n Lolol.. As I'm doing money orders at wally, the police came and detained me..now there's an irs special agent on site. Will keep all updated<\/p>\n — BengaliMilesGuru (@TahsirAhsan) February 4, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n