
How BofA froze my account for supporting my children - StavrosK
https://edfine.io/blog/2015/12/20/how-bofa-froze-my-account-for-money-laundering-because-i-pay-child-support/
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jacalata
Tl:dr; frequent transfers to South Africa for a long time that led them to
categorise him as a Money Service that needed to provide business
documentation. From his conclusion it appears that the DoJ rules would lead
any bank to do the same, so now he uses wire transfers instead of ACH with his
new credit union account.

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redefined
Thanks for the summary. I'd like to add a couple of salient points to it.

1\. The insidious nature of the DoJ rules allows the DoJ to target "risky"
industries (with no need to pass new laws), such that companies in those
industries can't get a bank account, making it hard or impossible for them to
do business. This helps the DoJ to push out industries it doesn't like, using
the banks to do its dirty work.

2\. It's much worse than it sounds, being required to "provide business
documentation". Being classified as an MSB would force the account holder to
implement an anti-money laundering program that is subject to independent
review, and possibly report transactions of a certain range of values. For a
personal bank account? This is, frankly, an egregious abuse of the law.

Disclosure: I wrote the blog post. I struggle to "omit needless words", sadly.

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jacalata
It really sounds like your problem is with the DoJ, but your blog post is all
about Bank of America. Nobody gets surprised or very interested by a story on
"Bank fucks over customer" so I don't think that focus helps you.

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redefined
Your point is well taken.

