Say hypothetically a really rich billionaire wants to donate/invest a lot of money to/in you what would be the best non crypto option to get that money since PayPal most bank accounts for that matter would stop and question you on it and probably wouldn’t believe it’s a donation?
Hypothetically: Banks don’t generally scrutinize the source of the money or why it’s being transferred. If the funds exist in the account, they just make the transaction. Also it’s on the gift giver to pay any applicable taxes.
In real life: Scammers posing as a billionaire are infinitely more likely to contact you than a real one. The scammers will depend on you thinking a normal bank transaction won’t work so you can jump through some hoops that will inevitably have you paying them real money instead.
In the USA banks most definitely scrutinize the source of money and why it’s being transferred.
Emphasis on “generally” in my statement. Of course there are exceptions where they would, but if I had a multi-million dollar check from Warren Buffett for replacing a few light bulbs in his house, the bank isn’t going to call him and make sure that’s a reasonable price or anything.
Banks can and do get into hot water if they’re found to have handled – inadvertently or not – funds which ends up with banned entities, like DPRK or terrorist groups, or are the product of fraud AND that they ignored reasonable suspicions.
The classic example is the so-called “703 account” of fraudster Bernie Madoff, held at JP Morgan Chase bank. Although a humble checking account, it saw huge money inflows and outflows, with one reference showing a single withdrawal of $1.3 billion. For their wilful disregard of the obvious red flags, the bank was fined $461 million of their own money, separate from the seizure of the account to pay the victims.
And perfectly normal people have had their accounts “closed due to fraud”, meaning the bank got suspicious and decided to unilaterally close the account, just in case. They do give the balance back to the owners, since it’s to avoid an ongoing fraud. It’s still annoying though, but banks won’t carry more liability than they’re comfortable with, at least when the regulators still bared their teeth from time to time.
Those are all extreme cases unlikely to be relevant to OP’s question.
The general rule is anything over 10,000 gets flagged and investigated if there’s additional suspicious activity. Same as when there are multiple deposits just under 10,000
Emphasis on this part. Either way, what you’re describing is generally for tax purposes. Going back to the original question of the thread, if I had billions of dollars and wrote a stranger a check, the bank is highly unlikely to make sure I meant it. At most they may report it to the government to make sure I pay gift taxes (which are paid by the giver, not the recipient, and even they apply far above $10,000 but you still need to report it at that level)
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in the USA are made to track both potential tax evasion and money laundering. This is where the $10k cash “limit” comes from, but SARs can/should be filed for higher amount that create suspicion.
Someone depositing a check for multiple times their lifetime transactions total would absolutely create suspicion on themselves, especially if it was a personal check. But if it were a business check from “ABC Mortgage Escrow”, that’s probably legit but a bank clerk is well within their rights to flag it. Flagging just means the money laundering team would investigate the source, determine that it doesn’t have other red flags, and quietly move on.
Exactly. Staying with OP’s hypothetical situation, potential investigation on its own does not mean it can’t happen. It just means there may be an extra step behind the scenes, very possibly without either party’s knowledge anything even happened. More importantly, if the benefactor insists on some dodgy payment method that’s an even clearer sign of BS because a normal bank doesn’t give as much of a shit as OP lets on
The receiver pays taxes over a given tax years allowance in addition to the tax paid by the giver.
There is a law called Know Your Customer. You have the generally backwards