Bank questioning our deposit of 4k ! Why?

[Selfraisings]

Dh has sold his electric bike as he has arthritis and it wasnt for him anymore . He sold it for cash at buyers behesr.
we took it to the bank today.. was treble quized.. thats a lot od cash, where is it from , told them , rhen we got grilled what sort of bike was it , on and on.. then they asked again.. how did you get the money again.. felt like we were really being grillled / suspicious.. what going on ?? !! Are they going to put the spotlighy on us or something?!!!
feel like the implication is we have done something wrong?!

My friend works in a bank and they have to ask these questions. It's not personal and bank staff take a lot of abuse from clients for not very much money. I used to work in a bank years ago but I would never go for a job in a bank nowadays.

They're just as fussy when you try to withdraw cash. I needed £2k for a second hand car and they refused so I had to speak to a manager.

In thr nicest possible way OP, are you 60+?
This is something my mum would say.

In simple terms bank transfers are deemed more legit as traceable.
Cash in large amounts is not. Drugs are a cash only business. Someone depositing 4k in cash is very likely to be doing something illegal because no one deposits large amount in cash anymore. Ever. It may ne normal in your town but it really isn't everywhere else.

Well I've heard of the word being used to refer to something amusing, I guess my sense of humour doesn't extend to stupid comments that would have made the OP look like an idiot if she'd said them.

It's nothing personal. When you deposit or withdraw larger amount of cash they always quiz.
I sold aome furniture, was quizzed, DH needed to withdraw 6k, waa quizzed. It's normal money laundering precaution the bank has to take.

Lots of banks now have restrictions on how much cash can be paid in at anyone time, or across the year, it’s all to do with money laundering

just answer the questions and move on

I am actually surprised someone takes it that peraonally. We are both immigrants and even we didn't 😂

The cashiers are trained on asking the questions and when they are stopping money laundering more is put on the unspoken than the spoken.

if you had to think about the answers, didn’t answer the questions straight up and didn’t pass the makes sense check I.e is the amount they are saying about right for what they have sold. Then suspicions will be raised.

Professional money launderers never go into the banks themselves they will use inexperienced mules to do the dirty work on their behalf. The questions do catch out these mules.

OP this isn’t just about suspecting you of something, it can also be about finding that you could be being used for money laundering purposes. So e.g. a teen paying in loads of different and regular amounts of cash into an account might be being used for county lines. That teen is vulnerable, but is a cog in a massive wheel, and the cash deposits he makes could lead to that ring being caught.

Honestly I would question why someone would want to pay me £4K in cash and would wonder where it had come from, esp as it’s a complete stranger we’re talking about here.

Yeah I overpaid on my mortgage the other month and got a letter asking me to prove where the money came from

@Selfraisings

its the law
don't take personally

But no one would get away with paying in £40K in cash, not in one go. If you're laundering money, you're far more likely to get away with it in a number smaller amounts. That's why the OP was questioned.

It could be that the person buying the bike is converting dirty cash into clean assets, (only really works if you expect to resell at a profit, I suppose,) so there still could be laundering involved somewhere along the line, but that's not the OP's fault. But you could laundering it by selling the (possibly stolen) asset to someone in your "gang", so it looks legit, but you basically end up with the cash and the asset.

If you're selling stuff for cash, it helps to be aware of this, so you don't get involved by accident. Bank transfers, or even cheques, are much more traceable- which is why laundering is often done by cash.

(I too learnt to launder money because of my IT job with a bank. I'm also really good at harassing colleagues for that reason. 😉 )

Don't know how much you had but my DH has a habit of collecting change. Once every couple of years he'll ask me to get it changed (he's disabled not lazy) and I just use it in the self service till at the supermarket. Might take two or three shops but it is convenient.

Cash is legal tender though so nothing wrong with using it.

I transferred £5k online and got heavily questioned so it's not just cash

Paying the proceeds of drug dealing into a bank is absolutely money laundering

I've never been asked. At the start of lockdown DH got a bit paranoid about banks and money (probably some conspiracy he'd read on the internet) so to reassure him I withdrew £2k in cash, no one blinked an eye. At the end of lockdown I paid it back in, no one blinked an eye. Is £2k too small for them to bother.

Never been questioned on that either. Transferred £10k to one of my kids (medical issue they needed help with) and it went straight through.

Maybe my bank just doesn't care?

Yep it's just protocol sadly.. we had to bank a few k of cash a while back and you'd think from the amount of questions that they didn't want us to bank it! - but they have to double check x

4k, not really huge is it?

Not even for large amounts either. I deposited £1000 once and it was like the Spanish inquisition

It's not always just cash. When DM died her house was sold and the solicitor transferred the money into my bank account. I went in to do a CHAPS transfer so we could clear the mortgage and was interrogated for that.

Where did the money come from? An inheritance. Where was it transferred from? X solicitor as you can see from the account (a local one in the same town). Why do you want to transfer the money? To pay off my mortgage obviously. We may need to speak to the person who gifted you the money. Well that'll be a bit tricky won't it as it's an inheritance and not a gift? They eventually transferred the money but the interrogation was ridiculous when there was a trail from a solicitor

Of course no-one is going to say they are laundering money - but if someone who has never really had large deposits of cash suddenly starts appearing with £3-4000 here and there and the stories of bikes/ cars / horses all sold for cash start to look a bit odd - then the bank might look to see what's going out. So nice Mrs Smith has recently sold £20k worth of "furniture" but made £18k worth of payments to a new payee - john Bloggs - hmmmm. She may be being conned into doing it but nonetheless... Or maybe there is a scam going on - and the bank need to go back and look at who paid what to whom. It's not just box ticking.

Just because they ask the questions they are legally obliged to, doesn't mean they think you did anything wrong. It's not personal.

They have money laundering regulations to comply with, which involves checking the source of cash - ensure it was not obtained illegally or cash work that has not been declared

Ehere will be paperwork that they need to complete to satisfy this