I am in the process of moving some of my savings to gold but don’t want to trigger the IRS reporting or anything else for that matter. If I withdrawal $3,500 a day or a few times a week, will that cause problems? I have been saving for a while, and so it is definitely out of the ordinary for me to withdraw that kind of money frequently, however, I did tell them what I was doing, and even inquired about safety deposit boxes to store the gold I am buying.
They have to prove you did it on purpose to try to avoid reporting or whatever, so you’re highly unlikely to be found guilty if you just happen to need to move a lot of money over a few days in pieces. If you get a call, just tell the truth and the investigation should be closed pretty quickly.
This is untrue. People have been found guilty of this even when they had a perfectly legitimate explanation, which OP doesn’t. I don’t know that OP is likely to get investigated simply for a single instance. Maybe. If they are investigated, I do know that it’s a big deal and they’re likely to be found guilty. I also know that OP is far more guaranteed to be completely fine if they just take it all out at once and do the IRS reporting. The IRS gets these reports all the time for all kinds of things. They’re not going to care about a single withdrawal right above the limit.
This is some of the absolute worst possible advice I have ever seen on the internet.
Absolutely fucking not. If the feds call you and want to talk with you about a crime they suspect you of, get a lawyer. Any talking they want to do that will be to your benefit can happen after you talk to your lawyer. There are some scenarios, before you become a suspect, where it is useful to be communicative with the cops. Once you’re a suspect, those scenarios are 0.
Without a lawyer’s guidance, you can have a 30-second conversation with them which will torpedo your defense and send you to prison when you would have been able to fight the case and walk away a free man. They are extremely skilled at making it sound harmless and friendly, and like a good idea to talk with them so you can air your side of the story and clear your name. It is not. They are lying. Get a lawyer.
Even if you didn’t do anything illegal (which, again, OP did in this scenario), don’t say a goddamned word. Tell them you’d like to speak with your lawyer first, show them ID, cooperate in general, but don’t say a goddamned word.
Here’s the law on structuring:
It requires intent to evade reporting requirements. The prosecution needs to prove intent, so if it was completely accidental, you wouldn’t be found guilty unless you have absolutely terrible representation or something. If regulators actually pursue an investigation, you’d give an explanation of your actions and the case would likely be. dropped.
Sure. OP is attempting to evade reporting requirements, so this would be a pretty straightforward case should prosecution choose to pursue it. If this is their first offense, the amount of money is pretty small, and OP can provide a clear paper trail, there’s a pretty good chance they’d be let off w/ a warning.
I’m saying this in response to “accidentally triggering” the reporting requirement. The average citizen isn’t aware of the reporting requirements, and if they happen to trigger it because of normal transactions, there’s no crime. If my bank called me asking about suspicious transactions, I’d tell them the truth, which lets them complete their report and the whole thing likely disappears.
If it gets to the point where federal regulators are calling, sure, lawyer up. But by that point, you should be aware that there’s some kind of criminal investigation happening instead of a reporting mishap.
Which this wasn’t.
There was a guy who got convicted of structuring because his armored car service or whatever gave him a limit of $10,000, so he would do deposits whenever his amount of cash started to get close to that. Presumably he explained himself in court. Guilty. Nobody decided to drop the case because he had a good explanation. For all I know, he’s now unemployable to this day because of his criminal history.
You have this sort of boy-scout understanding of how federal charges work that is not at all how they work. A lot of things in life work by just giving the honest explanation and people being reasonable. Being prosecuted is not one of those things.
That’s a whole different scenario. For some reason I was thinking you were talking about getting a call from the feds. Your bank calling is a little different.
If you were talking about getting a call from the bank, I would… well, OP basically is laying out that he’s planning to structure his deposits to evade the IRS reporting requirements, so I wouldn’t really advise telling that even to the bank. Again, being upfront about that kind of thing can be a quick recipe for prison. Just don’t do it. And, since you haven’t done it, if your bank calls and asks what you’re doing, you can be upfront about the not-criminal thing you are doing, if the not-criminal thing you are doing has somehow triggered some red flag. That I can agree with you on.
Do you have a link to a news article or court records for that case?
It’s in the John Oliver segment about structuring, which for some reason I can’t find right now. It’s in there though. That’s the only reason I know anything about this stuff.
I’m sorry, but what you’re saying doesn’t sound accurate. It would be a lot easier to believe you of you had evidence. Not that I think you’re lying, but you could be mistaken.
I can’t find the specific case (and it looks like it was maybe his insurance policy covering only up to $10,000, as opposed to the armored car service, which makes sense), but I found this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-accounts-on-suspicion-no-crime-required.html
So, you might be partially right: This might be an older pattern back when civil forfeiture was easier, when they could just take all your money because of “structuring,” but in the modern day, they might need to take you to court where you can easily beat the case if there was no intent. I definitely won’t swear that the case I remembered did not involve civil forfeiture.
Of course, the laws and prosecutions are about to get pretty fucking wild, so who knows what will happen to the civil forfeiture reforms. I definitely wouldn’t start assuming good faith or fair dealing on the part of any federal prosecutors this year going forward. Bottom line try not to commit any crimes.
“[Twoflower] also believed that anyone could understand anything he said provided he spoke loudly and slowly, that people were basically trustworthy, and that anything could be sorted out among men of goodwill if they just acted sensibly.” -The Light Fantastic, Terry Prachett
True. I’m talking about this statement you made:
That part is false. If you aren’t doing it on purpose, you’re missing the intent required to be in violation of the law. I’ll quote again:
And yes, I was talking about getting a call from the bank. That will happen pretty much every time unless it’s very clear that you’re trying to break the law, and getting a call from the bank could tip you off to destroy evidence or something.
If you know about the reporting requirements and are actively trying to avoid them (like the OP), I would hope you’d know enough to not admit to that over a potentially recorded line. If you’re unaware of the law and were not trying to avoid reporting requirements, there is very little, if any, harm in explaining yourself (they already have the evidence anyway).
Yeah. Like I said, I think you are correct that I was misremembering, and the letter of the law is as you said.
Maybe. Like I said, if there’s a totally innocent explanation and the bank is who you’re talking to, then probably you’re right that just giving the innocent explanation is fine.
It still just makes me incredibly queasy as a general rule, because there can be tiny elements (like in this case the issue of intent) where if you don’t know the statute, and you’re just kind of explaining stuff, you can accidentally confirm some minor element of the statute that they otherwise would have had some incredibly difficult time proving and give your lawyer fits and maybe do some time. It’s just a really bad habit to get into. They might have the material evidence of what transactions happened, but not the why, and your explanation of why it was innocent might accidentally confirm something in the statute. Whether or not you “meant any harm” or anything, and certainly whether you were aboveboard in your first interview before you talked with a lawyer just to be safe, is often totally irrelevant in court.
If the bank calls you, just explain. Assuming you’ve been following the law, which you really should have been. If it’s anything else, it should be Shut the Fuck up Friday.
Absolutely agree. Don’t talk to cops unless you’re filing a police report or as obligated by law.