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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

One should get an attorney if they desire legal representation, period. Otherwise it's quite perverse to be contributing to one of the main guilds facilitating this cesspool of overregulation, just in the hopes that their social status is going to make a bank think twice. And also attorneys aren't immune from this. In fact, one reason to actually get an attorney is that you want to launder some money.

Also, business accounts aren't immune from this dynamic, as per the article. It seems like you're just grasping at bureaucratic straws here in search of the just world theory. But no, the whole thing is really an accountable terrible dynamic that will continue to get worse and worse until it affects enough people that the laws change.

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Lawyers are not of much help when it comes to reopening already-closed accounts. Most of the time, banks will send a cashier check for whatever money left, if they close accounts abruptly. Sometimes, they give a month to move funds elsewhere. When a bank closes an account for that last check which they find suspicious--subsequently cleared by the payee bank, that's when banks give a run around. File a complaint with CFPB without any lawyer, unless of course that amount is substantial.

I agree - you don't need an attorney to file a complaint with the CFPB, and you should file a complaint with the CFPB ASAP when a bank starts pulling this crap. But the comment I was responding to was saying you should have an attorney to handle any large transaction, which I disagree with.

I wouldn't expect them to help with reopening, but if a bank is investigating an unexpected large deposit and determines that "Oh, it's coming from a law firm's escrow account" it gives at least one obvious possible explanation - and may also indicate to investigators that the account holder is someone with legal representation so don't be sloppy.

Wait hold up, lawyers can help you avoid the law as well?

I suspect the bar would not allow that.

You obviously can't cold call an attorney and ask for help laundering money. But if you find a money laundering operation through the proper channels, then it will likely involve a law firm somewhere that's facilitating making it properly legible to the system - setting up less-than-truthful companies, generating copious fraudulent documentation, etc. If anything attorneys' trust accounts should be receiving more scrutiny rather than less - using your account to handle money held in trust for someone else is generally something that sets off compliance department alarm bells, and for good reason (well, as good of a reason as there can be in the context of this topic).

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