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It's pretty normal. No surprise.

You weigh the cash with kitchen scales and check it's not paper blanks. That's about it. You have already exchanged contact details and IDs etc so it's all above board plus there is a solicitor present to hand over keys and act as immediate escrow. If there is a miscount of a few notes, ignore it and put it down to an accounting error.

Then you go down the bank, tell them you have a ton of cash to pay in, hand it over and it arrives in your account instantly. You have to provide ID and a receipt for the cash to say where it came from and that is it.

The scary bit was parking up in the local high street with a cash full of cash in your hand at a parking meter paying, then walking to the bank. When you have that sort of cash on you, you look like you have that sort of cash or a dead body in the case. Bank didn't even really think it was surprising.

Pretty depressingly boring.

I watched helicopters arriving in Hatton Garden from an office I worked in once and they were loaded with expensive diamonds and stuff with men in black suits - this was nothing even as remotely interesting or glamorous. The suitacase had no handcuff and was a bog standard samsonite one with dents all over it and the guy who bought it was a retired golf supplies salesperson.



Note that the bank will probably be filing an SAR, but also that that probably doesn't matter.


They do indeed file a SAR and it doesn't matter if it's a property sale and you have legal documents.

I do somewhat regret not splitting it into £10k slabs and putting them in deposit boxes but I needed the cash for another house! :(




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