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Comment by steveax | Hacker News Reader

Shady? How have we gotten to a place where carrying a modest amount of cash like $11k is "shady"? I suspect you're not familiar with how many unbanked people there are in this country, or what kind of predatory fees for banking services are levied upon folks with non-existent or low credit ratings.

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Yeah with only $11,000 he'd probably get hit with all kinds of fees if he tried to open a bank account. And forget about checks, you can't even write a check that big.

I'm not saying the cash was evidence of wrongdoing, but the elaborate excuses this thread is making for this guy's behavior are only highlighting how absurd it was.

I'm seeing minimum opening deposits on checking accounts between $10-$50. I don't imagine a person walking into a bank with $11k+ to open an account is the common use case...

I assume he was being sarcastic. But as a general rule HN doesn't do sarcasm.

I'm curious about the predatory fees for banking services you mention.

A Wells Fargo checking account can be had for $10/mo, a fee that is waived given 10 or more transactions a month or $500 or more in direct deposit a month or a minimum balance of $1500. Would people with non-existant credit be ineligible for an account like this?

It is possible to be denied a bank account based on overdrafting and abandoning prior accounts. This is not based on credit score with one of the 'big three' agencies, but another agency called Chexsystems that only deals with your conduct towards your bank accounts. Poor people frequently have this problem - an old overdrafted account prevents them from getting another one, even at a different bank.

The gag is that you'd think $11,000 would be enough to fix this problem. Usually people who have it couldn't put a few hundred together to close out the old account.

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