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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> the Bank may close your Accounts at any time...the Account Rules do not require the Bank to provide you with advance notice of the termination of the Accounts

I assume most of the big banks probably have similar language, which would be a huge red flag to me for a small business account. But what about banks like Mercury Bank, mentioned in the article as being more supportive of small businesses? Do their terms of service provide at least some kind of guarantee about due process if the bank has a question about your account?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act

"A financial institution is not allowed to inform a business or consumer that a SAR is being filed, and all the reports mandated by the BSA are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act."

(not speaking on behalf of my employer)

Note: SAR = Suspicious Activity Reports

Roughly, if you deposit more than 10K USD in cash, they will need to file this form with the OCC. And, a bunch of other activities qualify. There is no guarantee that this will result in account closure, not does it directly indicate illegal activity. This seems to be a myth online. In the industry, the SAR is regarded as a "get of jail free card" for poorly staffed compliance departments. "When in doubt, file a SAR!", then the bank cannot be so easily sanctioned for allowing illicit activities.

If a bank suspects you of money laundering, they cannot discuss it with you. A bank employee could go to federal prison just for leaking the existence of a suspicious activity report (SAR).

So, the guy who rushes up and parks his car right by yours in the otherwise spacious bank parking lot to block yours from view, the fellow wearing a mask, hat and dark glasses who's sporting a "Suspicious Person Here" flashing Caution button on his Tshirt, is he going to cause trouble for the bank's opinion of you?

But this is bullshit though? if they indeed didn't want you to know of the SAR they would have not closed the account and let you build more of a case to arrest you

Most SARs are innocuous, the feds aren’t going to run a sting operation every time someone is a little too suspicious for a compliance department to touch.

> In the U.S., SARs gather up in piles at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Most are write-once read-never. The dominant way they are actually used is that, when someone comes under criminal suspicion for other reasons, law enforcement runs their name through FinCEN. That will, some of the time, turn up sufficient threads about their money laundering to allow investigators to send letters to the relevant financial institutions to get full account histories.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/money-laundering-and-...

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