Chances are, a fraudster once used your credit or debit card information without your consent, and you did not find out until you checked your account statement and saw a charge for a restaurant you have never been to. You have probably also received alerts from your bank about a charge that your bank considered suspicious when, in fact, it was just you buying drinks and snacks from a 7-Eleven far from home while you were on a road trip. Banks are not omniscient when it comes to detecting fraudulent charges; you have probably experienced both false positives and false negatives. Likewise, law enforcement is not omniscient when it comes to detecting money laundering. There may be a banknote in your wallet now that once passed through a criminal enterprise, and your bank never found this out between the time when a conspirator deposited it and when it restocked the ATM from which you eventually made a withdrawal. Likewise, if police suspect you of money laundering, there is a good chance that you are innocent. If you are being investigated on suspicion of money laundering, contact a Texas white-collar crime lawyer.
Medium-Sized Cash Deposits
When you deposit large amounts of cash in the bank, anything above $10,000, the bank must report this to authorities; the same applies when you bring more than $10,000 cash into the United States when returning from international travel. Therefore, money launderers attempt to circumvent these regulations by making multiple deposits that are just small enough to avoid the reporting requirements; this is called “smurfing.” Of course, there are plenty of perfectly legal reasons to deposit approximately $9,000 in the bank on multiple occasions. For example, you might be depositing the contents of your store’s cash registers at the end of a business day.
Sending or Receiving Remittances
Remittances are when a family member working abroad sends money to relatives in their country of origin; they are a major source of income in many countries. Texas, with its diverse population and thriving economy, is a major source of remittances. If you both send and receive money from your home country or several countries, the authorities might get suspicious, but your transactions are probably perfectly legal.
Real Estate Purchases That Raise Red Flags
Financing most of the purchase amount with a mortgage is the usual way to buy a house, but it is not the only way. It is possible to buy a house in cash, but new regulations have gone into effect, increasing the amount of documentation you must provide to prove that the cash is not dirty money. Likewise, it is legal to buy a house in the name of an LLC, but this might also make the authorities suspect money laundering. In either case, it is possible to prove that you are staying on the right side of the law.
Contact the Law Office of Patrick J. McLain, PLLC About Criminal Defense Cases
A Dallas criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are being accused of money laundering. Contact the Law Office of Patrick J. McLain, PLLC, in Dallas, Texas, to discuss your case.