Slashdot Log In
Financial Responsibility == Terrorism?
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Mar 06, 2006 08:32 PM
from the utterly-speechless dept.
from the utterly-speechless dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Capital Hill Blue is reporting that recently a retired Texas schoolteacher and his wife had a little run in with the Department of Homeland Security. The crime? Paying down some debt. From the article: 'The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable. [...] They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Why Terror Financing is So Tough to Track Down 578 comments
An anonymous reader writes "After a recent Slashdot story detailing the errant investigation into a credit card holder's dept payment, comes this article from the Christian Science Monitor discussing the commoditization of terrorism, its relationship to crime, and the difficulties encountered when trying to track "bad" money."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
My experience (Score:5, Informative)
The training creeped me out. the uber-patriotic person assigned to train our group was so into it. 3/4 of our group thought it was great... bringing down meth dealers who weren't smart enough to structure their money better. In fact, however, structuring is a crime as well... Go just below the radar one too many times, and you can be charged, eevn if there is no illegal activity behind the generation of money.
And, I would be wise to post AC (I won't, so this message might get more credibility) as advising someone how to avoid setting off the bells and whistles is a crime too.
We don't live in 1984, but we might be at 1983...
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
The weird bit about this class was the continual referece to getting to know you customer. Which is of course imposible. So they set out all these questions and senerios to help you "GUESS" if there was a problem.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, I think a $6,000 payment to JC Penny (a department store) is quite unusual.
Now, to figure out who's laundering money through JC Penny...
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I freelance as a consultant for film. I fell into the gig by accident: I'd written a film for a producer (I was writing movies on the side at the time - doing pharma research during the day) and he needed me to do the financials for the film as well. He thought the financials were thorough enough to recommend me to his (rich) friends who were also looking to invest in film. They'd hire me to evaluate projects both as a line producer as well as market analysis in terms of prospects, etc.
My first check from this endeavor was more money than I'd ever had at any single time. I was on set, so I had the money wired into the account.
While on set (out of the country) I tried using my atm card. No dice. I couldn't log into my online banking. When I got home and went to the bank, I got the suspicious "wait right here" while the CS person went and got a manager. I told them what it was from and that it was legit. They did a background check. My account was frozen for 30 days while they checked it out. I got a business account after that - but occasionally, credits to the account are routinely frozen, especially if I'm dealing with a new client who hasn't wired in anything before. Apparently, entertainment shell companies are a favored vehicle of money launderers.
Good times.
Been going on decades before Homeland Security (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see.. If I make a transaction over $10k, there's paperwork to be done and now the government has the Eye of Sauron on me. Hmm, I think I'll just avoid that headache and make two transactions on two different days instead. Alarm! Alarm! You are now being taken to Castle Wolfenstein!
All this does is persuade criminals to NOT use banks at all and fucks over the legit folks. Typical end result of Big Brothering.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
In effect, if you don't want the government to observe you, and you act accordingly, that in itself will get you reported and can lead to you being charged with a crime. Thoughtcrime, indeed.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the summary is.
The person was informed that cash movement of over $10k has to be reported.
They then stop their normal legitimate pattern to avoid this reporting. In this case they were clearly trying to avoid the reporting system. They not only dropped most of their transactions below $10k, but also made deposits through an intermediary to avoid detection.
It would be similarly suspicious if someone went out of their way to use the store exit that didn't have the RFID tag sensors, but ONLY after being told that exit didn't have them.
Why quick debt repayments are suspect. (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore, they generally reason that any time you suddenly have a large pile of cash, they want to know where you got it from (the implication being that you might have stolen, embezzeled, or acquired it from some other illegal activity).
But yeah, it's not exactly a good thing for your privacy. Even so, there are enough laws on the books that merely having too much *cash* is a bad thing. I think that you can be accused of drug trafficing or something silly for having more than $10k in cash, too, but IANAL and that may just be some random Internet rumour.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
(a) You show up at the bank with $15k,
(b) The teller asks you to fill out the CTR form,
(c) and you try to restructure your deposit to avoid the CTR requirement.
You *know* that some law like this had to be on the books to try to minimally enforce filing requirements.
If you don't like it, don't try to deposit all at once. Problem solved.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is an idiotic argument, because what's currently okay won't always be okay.
Ask someone who signed up for the trendy, fashionable Communist Party in the 1920s how that act later went over in the 1950s, for example.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ex Post Facto (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Microphones became more sensitive? Well, of course some jackass was going to use it to record you against your will, jackasses have been around and will be around.
The government specifically using and developing new technologies and techniques for spying on its own citizens? THAT was something to worry about... 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Fountainhead, Anthem...
My great grandmother was interrogated by the SS for 12 hours on a rumor that she was a sympathizer to the bank president who had been turned in on suspicion of not being a good member of "the party" which later turned out to be entirely false and propogated by the local priest who was a toady to the Nazis and coveted the man's house. His reward for the "information" was of course the house but my great grandmother lost some of her good standing in the community and the president "disappeared".
Privacy matters to my family even if we haven't done anything illegal.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever people try to defend the latest ridiculous things that DHS is doing, they always trot out the line "but you want the government to catch terrorists, don't you?" That's a completely specious and indefensible argument; the government had more than enough information to catch the 9/11 terrorists before the act, and failed to do it because they had too much information and not enough ability (or willingness) to correlate it. Thus collecting MORE information is not the answer, especially since it encroaches that much more on the liberty of citizens.
Terrorism should not be dealt with differently than any other crime. As in, "innocent until proven guilty", and "better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly convict one innocent man". The Constitution requires search warrants for investigations of other crimes (though King George the W claims otherwise); they should be required for terrorism investigations as well, including searching financial transactions.
These "know your customer" banking regulations, the transaction reporting threshold, the instructions to report suspicious transactions even below that threshold, and the prohibition of "structuring" transactions all actually came about before 9/11, but have been stepped up significantly since then. The original rationale was the so-called "war on drugs". But that's not any better reason than the so-called "war on terrorists".
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
You wouldn't mind being detained in a holding cell for a day because some overzealous cop thought you 'looked suspicious'? I mean, you got released the next day, so no harm, no foul?
How about having the police raid your home because you've bought a little too much cold medicine over the past month, and you also happened to place an order for some beakers for a halloween party? Because, you might be running a meth lab, and so the cops were able to get a nearly unrestricted warrant on that alone? I mean, it's no big deal, other than the day of work you missed, the neighbors watching the police crawl all over your property, and all those entries in the public records.
Seems a little more scary, doesn't it?
It has nothing to do with being a conspiracy, and everything to do with a big-ass violation of the Bill of Rights. You, as a citizen, have a right to be secure in your papers and effects, which is why we have this whole warrant system. It's supposed to be that, if the cops want to poke into your business, they have to show probable cause to a judge, and everything is public record (so you can see what they're saying about you, basically).
Basically, it's a huge pain in the ass, so why go through it unless you really think the person is a criminal?
Now, your entire life is practically open; law enforcement has access to all of your financial records, including taxes and bank account information, and all without needing a warrant, as long as you violate some arbitrary criteria as to what 'normal' is. Does this help them catch criminals? I doubt it; I mean, the crooks dumb enough to be cooking meth in their kitchens don't usually give a damn about pyrex or lab safety equipment, and the guys smart enough to build nuclear weapons in their basement aren't going to try and buy their supplies at Home Depot.
Personally, I'd rather our law enforcement dollars were spent on, oh, education, especially in high-crime areas, and in prison reform, so that inmates came out of prison, well, reformed, rather than better-trained in being criminals.
So, yeah, all of this does scare and bother me, not because I think that there is any big conspiracy, but because the government is violating my rights in exchange for some illusion of safety.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
from the article: "Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up."
i can't speak for anyone else, but i know that a hold placed on my bank account would ruin me. i would not be able to pay rent, buy food. i would probably be evicted from my house.
all because some monkey raised a flag on a "suspicious" transaction.
true - nobody went to jail in this case... but you seem to not be accounting for how easily innocent lives can get screwed up when flags are raised and accounts locked.
maybe you should revisit your argument?
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
And the idiotic thing about this is if the retired Texan schoolteacher had actually been planning buying a truckload of fertilizer and diesel and driving it into a church/mosque/synagogue/abortion clinic; he would have been alerted that the feds were onto him and gone undergound; or accelerated his plan to get it done before he was caught. So as an anti-terrorism measure, it's counter-productive.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Moreover, I hardly consider asking the government to abide by the Bill of Rights as an appeal to emotion, and I'd also think that suffices as a very concrete reason for being bothered. Nice try, though.
Of course, the person involved wasn't incarcerated, but they had to take time out of their normal daily lives to deal with overzealous law enforcement; that's potentially lost wages, a hell of a lot of stress, and a very big pile of resentment, because innocent people *really* *hate* being accused of a crime, and doubly so when the accusation is for an asinine reason.
More importantly, this guy did something small. Reeeeeeeeeeeally small. And he then had to justify his actions to law enforcement. What if he had done something only slightly more suspicious, like maybe paid off a few credit cards before nabbing some foreign currency for his upcoming vacation?
Now, here's the emotional part:
I am honestly scared every time I fly back into the U.S. I, personally, have never been mistreated by customs, but I've seen the harassment that more 'suspicious-looking' individuals have undergone, nevermind that I'm just as likely, if not more so, to be a terrorist as the Indian guy in line behind me.
I am really bothered that my countrymen see nothing wrong with ignoring the Constitution whenever convenient. That Americans like seeing all those new 'security measures' at the airport, nevermind that it means that I've got no choice but to check my bags in whenever I travel, because my nail clippers might be a 'deadly weapon of terrorism'. Of course, the wine bottle I've got on me is totally safe, and could never be used to hurt anyone...
More importantly, I'm really bothered that we pull stunts like this at home, along with the whole problem of not being able to run an election, while at the same time claiming abroad that we are 'champions of democracy and freedom'. People in other first-world countries don't hate Americans, but they certainly don't like our attitude when it comes to the soverignty of other countries.
I'm not saying that we're the worst, of course; the German government is very serious about making sure the Nazis never rise to power again, and I've had friends dragged in front of the police (German citizens) because they did something to tip off the Nazi-o-meter. But the Germans don't claim to be the 'Land of the Free', we do. Why don't we act like it?
Ok, end the emotional side of my rant.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, it cost them "nothing" because that's MY money!
MY money was being used to harass retired school teachers. That's MY money that could have been used to pay real cops a raise. That's MY money being used so that some DHS lackey can play Joe Friday and feel all detectivey. MY money could have gone towards having the army we wanted. MY money could have gone towards buying food for Wal-Mart employees (whoops, different rant).
But no, MY money was spent freezing the account of some little old man because he tried to pay his bill. MY money was spent to see if JC Penney was really a terrorist front. MY money was wasted.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Vhat you hav to realise is none of tis means anything. So KGB be notified. So they have a look at your bumagi. So they notice nothing be wrong, they go away.
Vhat the problem? It be age old statement that defeats conspiracy theorists, they who convinced the government is going to imprison all good Soviets vhile the real reactionaries run free.
"If you not doing anything vrong, you hav nothing to vorry about."
Tink about it. If someone vere involved in the shifting of huge amount of funds around and planning the next Trotskyte terror campaign, subversive sabotage or bombing, you mean all would not want to know about it? Phew! You be joker.
============
Absolutely, I haf been telling zis to my Komraden for all zis time!
What you haf to realize is none of zis means anyzing. So ze Gestapo is notified. So zey haf a look at your recorden. So zey eventually notice nozing is vrong, and zey go away.
What iz ze problem? Again it comez down to ze age old statement zat defeats ze conspiracy zeorists who are convinced ze government is going to imprizon all good Germans while ze real Communisten und Juden run free.
"Iv you are not doing anyzing vrong, you haf nozing to worry about."
Zink about it. If someone vere involved in ze shifting of huge amounts of funds around und planning ze next Burning of the Reichstag or bombing of ze train tracks carrying our heroic troops in Polen, you mean you all vouldn't vant to know about it? Jaaa. Right.
Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the most naive, despicably un-American sentiment of all the tripe that's thrown around in this charade that is post-9/11 paranoia.
I'm sorry for being ad hominem, but please, try to use your imagination here.
This sheep-like "nothing bad happens to good people" mentality is the type of smug, head-in-the-sand mentality that destroys free society. My folks emigrated from behind the "Iron Curtain" in the late 60s exactly to escape the sort of propoganda and easy government-sanctioned persecution that I see creeping up all around us. Let me tell you stories about family and friends fired, harrassed, jailed, and yeah, even tortured because their actions were "misinterpreted", Sometimes they were released without apology a few months later, sometimes not. Sometimes the reason for the police action was political. Sometimes they were framed by competitors. Sometimes they were "snitched" on by neighbors with vendettas. Sometimes they just had the wrong guy. When paranoia rules and every out-of-step behavior is potentially subversive (or "terroristic") it's pretty easy to wreak havoc with people's lives, either intentionally or not.
But that doesn't happen here, right? You wouldn't get labeled terrorist and jailed indefinitely for something as silly as trolling unsavory websites right? [64.233.179.104] Or be charged with a crime and have your property destroyed because you had a stupid bumper sticker, right? [columbusdispatch.com] And we'd never get so paranoid about air travel as to make a mother drink her own breast milk [usatoday.com] to prove its safe before boarding a plane, or maybe create a secret no-fly list that is impossible to audit or even acknowledge but sometimes bars toddlers from flying because they might be terrorists [usatoday.com] (along with hundreds of others, including members of Congress), right? I mean, these are good people who didn't do anything wrong. I can't imagine that there'd be a slew of kafkaesque civil rights abuses that an internal Justice Dept. [cbsnews.com] investigation might uncover [cnn.com], right? (I won't even touch domestic wiretapping) I mean, those who have nothing to fear have nothing to hide, right? Right.
These are just small examples, and maybe not even very good one. And maybe you'll never inconvenienced like the couple in this story. But who knows. Maybe you'll be the victim of identity theft, or even framed.. Maybe you'll have to engage in some bizzare but innocent behavior. Maybe you'll want to voice an unpopular opinion, or go read/hear someone else's horrible and unpopular opinion. Or maybe it'll just be some bureaucratic "oops". But, if it does happen, and YOU find yourself interrogated by the FBI, or forced to explain some blotch on your record for the rest of your life, or maybe even jailed without charge for a few months, then you come tell me how, sure, maybe you lost three months of your life in a cell being molested by thugs, but hey, at the end, everyone figured out it was just a big mistake. So really, it was OK. We're all safer for it. God bless America.
More to this story? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why you need a driver's license, are required to wear seat belts, can't drive before a certain age, and have to drive a vehicle that meets government safety standards. It's also why you're required to have regular inspections, and why you can be pulled over and ticketed for driving with faulty equipment, or arrested and jailed for driving under the influence or even just recklessly.
In other words, not a good example to support your argument. (Which I basically agree with otherwise.)
But this all misses the point. Where is the rest of this story? All we know from this article, factually (or at least according to these people, who may or may not be telling the truth), is that one is a retired schoolteacher and they were contacted by homeland security because of a large payment they made. We also know that this guy has a lot of anger towards the government that may or may not have been caused by this action by DHS, or it may have existed previously and manifested itself in other ways. We don't know for how long or why these people were under surveillance by DHS - and some people have pretty good reasons for being under surveillance. (Yes, even Americans - remember Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols?)
Now, if large payments alone were a trigger for a DHS audit, you can bet it would be front page news. Millions of people every year make large payments into their IRA's or on their home mortgages at various times for tax purposes, or other reasons. I myself have made payments larger than $6,000 on both my credit cards and student loans, and I can assure you that's not my normal payment amount - but I have yet to be contacted by DHS. Why is that? The only difference between me and this guy, according to this article, is that he is a retired Texas schoolteacher and I work in the entertainment industry. The DHS must love their cable TV.
No, it just sounds fishy. Either the story is made up, or there's a long backstory here that we're not getting. Otherwise this surveillance would appear to be basically random (targetting some people who make payments like this but not others), in which case they may as well just close their eyes, open a phone book and point to get their latest victim. Why even bother?
Sometimes I do get a little tired of seeing these conspiracy theory stories on
Re:My experience (Score:5, Funny)
What? They're not doing any such thing. Want proof? Watch me say something anti-government:
This government is the worst on the planet. Thanks to it, I'm surprised anyone wants to live here!
See? Nothing happened to me. There's nothing to worry about. You can say and do anything you##$:(!*NO CARRIER
Re:My experience (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I'd rather just type "OH SHIT!" and use the extra time it takes to type those 2 extra characters and try to run away.
Catcher in The Rye (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was flying back from Europe, I had to fill out a form with who I was, and my home address, and an emergency contact (if I so wished).
They set it up like it's some sort of idea that all flights into the US require all US citizens to be recognized and accounted for, so that if it goes down? or something like that? that they can know for sure who was on board, and can start contacting people ahead of time?
The requirements for entering the US are so ridiculously more complex than any other country I've visited.
You're all being watched like prisoners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isin't that funny you can be freer in Afghanistan than in the US.
Re:You're all being watched like prisoners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're all being watched like prisoners... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the Pakistani Millionaire who is currently being held in Guantanamo without trial?
http://www.tkb.org/NewsStory.jsp?storyID=109345 [tkb.org]
Note, he may be guilty, he may be innocent. I have no idea, but he does deserve Habeas Corpus, IMO everyone does.
On a brighter note... (Score:5, Insightful)
>
>And Bin Laden is still free.
He hates us for our freedom. All this means is that he's got less and less reason to hate us every day!
Let's run an experiment... (Score:5, Funny)
Bah, this isn't about terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
Any unexpected transaction these days gets the once over, any cash purchase over X gets reported to the FBI. (Last I heard, X was $10K) Buy a car with cash, get investigated. Walk into an airport with a sack of cash and it will simply be taken, no appeals, no trial, no recourse. Simply being in an airport with cash is a crime subject to asset forfeiture. Bitch too loud and they will simply arrest you along with the money. Been that way since the '80s.
Re:Bah, this isn't about terrorism (Score:5, Funny)
Bush hasn't been president since the '80s, so that cannot be true!
Lousy Article (Score:5, Informative)
The auto-trip flag for this is that when a large payment comes in that's many multiples of the payee's normal history, the credit card company will hold the payment until the check clears, which is within 10 days at the outside.
In other words, this has nothing to do with terrorism, the fascist Bush regime, the gestapo at DHS, or any other Orwellian fantasy you can cook up. It's an arguably poor fraud prevention measure, nothing more.
It happened to me. (Score:5, Informative)
But after reading the article about the guy who got turned in to Homeland Security for paying $6500 on his JCPenneys account, now it all makes sense. I saw another version of this news article, it said the "bank security act" requires credit card companies to report large payments. I can't find any such law, there's a Bank Security Act of 1974 but that far predates the existence of Homeland Security. The closest regulation I can find is the requirement to report cash transactions larger than $10k to the IRS.
This is all so much bullshit I can't believe it. It's some sort of secret law, or more likely Homeland Security has duped banks into playing along with an imaginary law, just to get more data on totally innocent people. I am infuriated. I can't wait to see what happens when I try to board an airplane, now that DHS thinks I'm a terrorist, I bet I'm on the No Fly List.
There is no anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)
It is interesting that the justifications that existed when the level of x was thousands of dollars are now quoted when x is hundreds, when in theory, the effects of inflation should cause x to increase.
In a few years, as technology, and data storage, and indexing allows, all transactions will be reported, catalogued, and analyzed, all in the name of security, and there will be plenty of readers that will be happy to step up to the plate and explain the justifications.
The real reasons of course are about control of the masses, and to maintain authority by reminding all citizens that they are being watched and can be brought in to explain their actions and transactions at any time should their activity, be it financial or political opinion, raise an eyebrow in Washington, or the local town hall.
While this particular example of credit card activity may or may not have occurred, the interesting point is that the assumption is that if someone's financial activity appears to change to a third party, the first party must explain their behaviour, as if there is a presumption of wrong doing.
This is in opposition to the principals set forth in the Bill of Rights and the forth amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Since there is no probable cause to believe that a person with $600 or some other arbitrary amount has acquired the funds through illicit mechanisms, requiring the person to provide documentary evidence is clearly an illegal search and seizure.
This also may be a violation of the tenth amendment:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
Since the ability to keep tabs and monitor the general population is not expressly granted to the federal government by the constitution, such activity must be the domain of the states. This is why the feds now claim that this is part of the "war against terrorism" to create a federal interest in monitoring of ordinary citizens, just like the illegal wiretapping of ordinary citizens phoning back to the old country.
The future is bleak, and the trends before us further demonstrate that these United States have continually moved from a democratic republic for the people, by the people, to a fascist state that operates in the interest of the new aristocracy, let's not forget that the most interesting of all financial transactions are the least scrutinized.
Has any else noticed the huge transfer of wealth from public coffers to private hands..? (hint: it was more than 600 bucks).
Re:not a perfect system, someone propose a better (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
You wired the money... Two cars ago I paid for a nice car with cash. I had the money at hand, depositing checks from multiple accounts, only to have some clown try to charge me for a cashiers check and hassle me about when funds were ready (moving from accounts within the same bank) because they had to certify things. I was certified or at least fit to be tied - so I said fine - I'm not paying for a check, give it to me in cash. (for the record, my bride said it was a bad idea) I expected hassles from the bank, who delayed, had me fill out forms, and do a thumbprint.
The car dealership were the once that surprised me. Seems spending a healthy amount of cash for a car set off flags there as well. They asked if I could deposit the money and write a check! Several forms later, and a 'I told you so...' I had the car. Pre-war on Eurasia, so I suspect things are worse today.
Re:No problem here (Score:5, Interesting)