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?!

I recently transferred some money to another account in my name at a different bank. My app was blocked for suspicious activity and I had to answer the same questions four times with four different people. I had far fewer questions when a lot more money moved through my account for a house sale a few years ago, although I did call the bank to warn them back then. I like to think that these questions help protect elderly and vulnerable people but it is quite frustrating when you have to spend a long time answering questions. I almost started second guessing myself and wondering if I really did own the other account 🤔

Is it? I thought the money had to be “washed” first so it looks like it comes from a legitimate non-illegal source

We're selling a house solicitors want us to provide three months of bank statements if we do electronic transfer. Trouble is we have no paper statements because we bank online 🙈

It's their job to do that

I added £3k to a maturing ISA a few days ago and was asked similar questions. It's not personal.

Just go in to your branch and ask them to print off your statements or if you have a printer do it yourself, banks are very used to people requesting statements.

Sorry that was for @justasking111

It may be too late for you now but I think what you have to do if you know you are going to do something like this is to change to paper statements beforehand so you have them coming in in readiness. Sometimes even in this day and age it seems solicitors want paper statements and utility bills that are the postal ones, the solicitor which was dealing with my DMs probate wouldn't accept online PDFs for some reason

Can you not provide the PDFs? These are legal documents now. When I sold my house my solicitors provided an APP to upload the documents.

I don't know it required postal ones, I had to order an energy bill from British Gas, that was on the website to do so quite easy and I had a bank statement come through the post, it's not so unusual as I have see others moan about this on websites like MSE. This was about a year ago

My husband transferred me £3k a couple of months back from a win on the postcode lottery.
His bank held the payment up even though they could see that the money had come from the postcode lottery.
He had to speak to the fraud department.

😂

Think banks can get large fines if they are inadvertently involved in money laundering or proceeds of crime now so they have to document out of the ordinary transactions.

I think anyone who wants to pay or get paid with that sort of cash is likely to be hiding something. Why not use a bank transfer? Much safer for all involved as it provides proof of sale/purchase.

Yes I had to speak to the fraud department, a big red box came up on my online bank to ring them and even if I changed my mind about the transaction I still had to ring them within 24hrs or they would temporarily suspend my account

It does - I used to work for an Insurance company, and we had to look out for money laundering.

Anyone paying cash for expensive policies, or several smaller policies, which they would then cancel a short time after inception (resulting in a refund of clean money), would be flagged as suspicious.

Yes, like buying a bike with it....

But obviously it was discovered and it was acted on otherwise you wouldn't know anything about it. So it's not true to say they "turn a blind eye".

I used to work in IT for a financial institution and I can assure you this sort of thing will eventually be discovered however small the individual amounts are. There are checks built in to the software that detect discrepancies between what should be in an account and what actually is.

In fact if you really did work in a bank I am surprised you don't recognise that this is standard money laundering prevention. Even those of us in none customer facing roles had to for refresher courses on this annually, so presumably counter staff were even more on the alert.

Perfectly normal. They have money laundering regulations to adhere to and they can get into a lot of trouble if not.

Well if by jobsworth you mean somebody who doesn’twant to get sacked and possibly prosecuted for not following the rules. Possibly you have read the rest of the thread by now but, if not, this is totally and completely normal and is what counter staff in banks and building societies are trained to do. And reminded of repeatedly in refresher courses.

Bank transfers offer no better a service. I tried to pay 5k for new windows. It was going from my account where you could see I had saved up the money slowly, to a window firm, easy to Google to check it was real. I still had to jump through hoops. I ended up going to a building society to get cash out.
Window firms tend to want to be paid as soon as the windows are installed, not wait a day or two while you talk to the bank, the fraud team, the bank again.

I work in a bank.

We don't want to ask you these questions. We have to. It's literally for the sake of our jobs. Personally, we couldn't care less where the money came from. But we need to put a source down on system. So please don't give your bankers a hard time.

It's because banks are much more accountable nowadays for money laundering and financial crime. Everything must have a trace. And they don't want people running cash-in-hand businesses through personal bank accounts - ie to avoid business banking fees. (Mobile hairdressers, decorators etc.)

I had this recently. I went to the Bank of England to change £400 of very old £50 notes into current tender. Had lots.of questions, related to anti-money laundering. I felt like saying that "90 year old guy keeps his savings under his mattress and passes away, they get found by only child and changed to legal tender " should not be as difficult to comprehend as they were making it. But obviously I was very polite.

Where do the farmers get such large amounts of cash from?!
In accepting cash for the scooter, how did you get comfortable that the money you were receiving had been legally obtained & declared (ie how did you get comfortable that you weren't receiving the proceeds of crime)? Much harder to assume funds are legit if received in bundles of used notes.

I was told I couldn't tip due to money laundering in a restaurant last week.

Op issue is def ML. It's covered in regulation and if you had been ML and the staff hadn't followed procedure then they are complicit eg turned a blind eye.

Although I have no idea how they know one has not sold a car and its ML.