SAR Improvements and Other Fun Facts.

Priority = High

Ever wonder whether anyone gets a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) you filed? Does anyone really care about all the hard work you put into filling out the form just right? Unless the filing gets the attention of law enforcement (or you made a glaring error), you really can't be sure that the SAR arrived safely at it's destination. Until now, that is. on September 12, 2009, FinCEN will implement SAR Acknowledgements for BSA Electronic Filing submissions. More information can be found on FinCEN's SAR Acknowledgements and Validations Questions and Answers Guide.

A little bit about SARs:
A credit union must file a SAR when it knows or suspects that:
The funds come from illegal activity or disguise funds from illegal activity; the transaction is structured to evade BSA requirements, (for instance a member makes more than one deposit to circumvent the $10,000 cash reporting rules); apparent unlawful purpose; or, the credit union is being used to facilitate criminal activity.

Credit Unions are required to file an SAR report following the discovery of: insider abuse involving any amount, violations aggregating $5,000 or more where a suspect can be identified, or violations aggregating $25,000 or more regardless of a potential suspect.

Considering all the attention on Privacy rules, the requirement to file an SAR only upon a "hunch" seems oxymoronic (no moronic jokes, please). So it's tempting to error on the side of caution and file an SAR only when the law has clearly been violated. But be careful, there are penalties for those individuals that fail to file an SAR as required or disclose to the member that they have filed a SAR about them. Penalties include extremely high fines and long prison sentences if found guilty. In addition, financial institutions face penalties for failing to properly file CTR and SAR reports, including heavy fines and regulatory restrictions, even to the point of charter revocation.

But not to worry, the government says you can't be held liable for information filed on a SAR report.