eyeball1234

I spent several years as an executive at a midsize bank working in the anti-money laundering department. I believe your video mischaracterizes the timing of the transaction and the SAR and sets up a false choice for the bank. Unlike sanctions interdiction, which I managed, banks are not allowed to hold funds arbitrarily. The main problem with your implied messaging in the video is that it makes it seem like a bank can either choose to file a suspicious activity report and take the fee, or otherwise return the transaction. In the real world, most transactions are not flagged as suspicious until after the fact, based on a combination of transaction history and sophisticated analysis that periodically runs multiple transactions through a behavioral modeling tool. E.g., a SAR is almost never filed until the transaction itself and the entities involved in the transaction have been thoroughly investigated. Your video makes it sound like banks are knowingly letting transactions through because they are greedy for the fees even though they know the transaction is suspicious, but in reality transactions don't get flagged as suspicious in real time, and nobody good or bad would ever bank with a company that canceled their transactions on a hunch.

But... but... potatoes grow underground! How would you spray the skin of an underground potato?

(I know you've already gone off to bed, but please, I am thoroughly confused by this).

Fortunately the two months was paid leave by the employer and I didn't have to take FML. Also, I work for a pretty amazing company that encourages its employees to maintain side gigs... my manager actually knows about my project and even posted a (rather tough) question on this IamA!

I recognize not everyone will be in this situation, but truthfully the fact that I was contributed to me wanting to make the most of it.

Hi - It's a fair question. I actually addressed this in the introduction. I've got a really great support network of friends and family who wanted to participate, including quite a few of them who didn't have reddit accounts previously (I'm in my 30's, so parents/aunts/uncles tend to have a few more years than the average redditor). I promise there's no sock-puppeting going on.

Fat and happy. Thanks for asking :)