
Frequent cash withdrawals land Springfield man in court - warsaw
http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/crime/2016/04/24/frequent-cash-withdrawals-land-springfield-man-court/83470570/
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manyxcxi
I'm not sure what kind of reporting news-leader.com generally does, but I feel
like most of this story is missing.

Sure, he was structuring, which seems as ridiculous as 'precrime' to me. But
why was the guy trying to flout reporting requirements? Why were they looking
in to him? I'm positive that my bank transaction history would, at times, look
odd- especially as I was ramping up to buy a house and move to a different
state while starting a new company. Also, my credit union was always in
Oregon, even when I wasn't- which lead to weird contortions like mailing
myself a $5,000 check and a $2,500 check to then snap check them in to my
business account with the same credit union because I hadn't taken the time to
link them properly yet and the max you can snapcheck is $5K, and I didn't want
to take the time to find a partner branch.

Maybe someone looked into it behind the scenes, maybe they didn't. Either way,
my money never got frozen and I never got in trouble. Why? Because I wasn't up
to no good. I'm not touting the "if you've got nothing to hide..." crap about
being happy to give up my liberties, but in general, even when they're
stomping all over our constitution you don't go to jail for no reason.

~~~
thephyber
The DOJ states that he admitted he was structuring to bank employees, whereas
the article says he admitted it to his employees. Either way, he knew he was
avoiding reporting requirements, so he would have been able to figure out that
it was a crime. Admitting it to the bank employee was probably what started
the legal investigation.

Additionally, there are newer reporting requirements that deal with a change
in behavior of deposits/withdrawals, not just a fixed floor of $10k per
transaction. I know this has been talked about since at least 9/11.

If I were you, I wouldn't admit on a public website to skirting a law, but I'm
not sure that "snapcheck" is a law vs some company's risk-limiting policy.

I generally agree that this seems like a non-crime being prosecuted, but it's
the law. Until people stop deferring all safety/security decisions to police
and prosecutors (which is why we have such a ridiculously bloated criminal
code), we will continue to have laws like this for the nanny state to save us
from doing the "wrong" things by keeping us in a nice, safe prison cell for 10
years.

------
xiaoma
It's insane that 10 years in prison is the potential penalty. No wonder the US
"leads" the world with it's prison population.

~~~
dpark
Yeah. American prisons are overflowing with guys who got caught pulling $220k
out of the bank in a structured fashion. This is the real source of our prison
overcrowding.

~~~
xiaoma
Your comment is sarcastic, uncharitable and unproductive.

Obviously the narrow specifics around this case are not the sole cause of
prison overcrowding. It's been driven by a massive expansion of criminal codes
and decades of ratcheting minimum sentence guidelines upwards and get tough on
crime efforts such as "three strikes" laws. The result has been a flood of
people imprisoned for money laundering, recreational drugs, petty theft and an
even larger number who are simply awaiting trial. The specific case in this
story is just one example.

~~~
dpark
Are you asserting that overzealous prosecution of money laundering is a
significant source of prison overpopulation? I'd love to see some sort of
supporting evidence for this claim.

As it stands now, it looks to me like you're just lumping nearly every crime
together and insinuating that because some are overpenalized that all are.

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fasteo
I understand that structuring may reveal a pattern for an illegal activity
(money laundering, fraud, etc) and that law enforcement can used it as a hint
to discover these activities.

But is structuring illegal by itself ? If so, it seems that presumption of
innocence is ignored.

Am I missing something ?

~~~
thephyber
If you know that structuring is illegal and you tell -y-o-u-r- -e-m-p-l-o-y-e-
e-s- your bank[2] that you are doing it to evade reporting, you admitted a
crime to a witness. It doesn't matter what you are doing with the money after
it is withdrawn. If he was using the money for money laundering or other
illicit business, that is a separate crime from the one described in the
article.

Dennis Hastert, former Congressional House Speaker, was convicted of the same
charge[1] when an investigation into his (alleged) extortion/hush money used
the same tactic to avoid financial reporting. AFAIK, he wasn't actually
convicted of child molestation or statutory rape, but was convicted of the
money laundering-related crime (because that was easier to prove).

Whether avoiding financial reporting is a reasonable statute is beside the
point, but perhaps what you were commenting on.

The way I look at it, it's like a seat-belt law. It's only reasonably
enforceable after you've already been pulled over for some other moving
violation.

It seems to be in-line with most of the federal code which is designed to give
federal prosecutors outsized leverage in plea negotiations. The more charges
and the more years of prison they can throw at a defendant, the better the
odds they will come away with a conviction. Sadly, this also leads to a lot of
largely innocent people taking plea deals to avoid getting railroaded by
vindictive prosecutors and less-than-rational juries.

[1] [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/dennis-
hastert-s...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/dennis-hastert-
sentenced-15-months-prison)

[2] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business-
ow...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business-owner-pleads-
guilty-structuring-financial-transactions)

~~~
fasteo
>>> It seems to be in-line with most of the federal code which is designed to
give federal prosecutors outsized leverage in plea negotiations

That's what I thought. It's only that I find it - in general terms - terribly
unfair and abusive.

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jaclaz
It's [2016], here is the original source:

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business-
ow...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/springfield-business-owner-pleads-
guilty-structuring-financial-transactions)

------
LorenPechtel
He admitted to structuring, why is it surprising he was convicted?

