Can you imagine how offended you'd be if these were serious payments and the bank suggested you were joking? I have a mental image of a jihadist having an meltdown because their bank didn't take them seriously.
lmfaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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Well their requirement for looking into it is probably not restricted to "payments with labels referencing the taliban" but something more broad.
I used to write a check to my room mate and then she would write the rent check to the landlord. My checks to her always said "For: Sexual favors and drugs ;)" No one contacted us.
I've been doing this for decades. I find raunchy copypasta and put it in the notes section of etransfers. Nobody is investigating something because of what's in the notes field.
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I marked my rent payments to my roommate with "Cocaine and Hookers", went on for years but his bank complained one day too.
Funny to imagine if the banks managers were actually using our money for exactly that, but marked as company expenses instead.
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The most unrealistic thing about this post is the bank not immediately blocking this user and dropping them from all banking services. Taking the time to investigate and not dropping the customer.... Incredible
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I think the bank is smart enough to understand they were probably drunk and joking, if they were actually performing terrorist acts with the funds then they wouldn't label them so plainly. Closing someone's bank can cause a lot of issues in their life so it is more fair to warn them first.
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I agree that is the reality we should live in, I'm not so sure that's the reality we do live in as experienced by most banking customers.
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Starling are a newer bank as well and seem to be more forward thinking. An older bank may be likely to ban your account for this.
They really aren't. Honestly most banks don't care what "illegal" things you do as long as you give them plausible deniability.
If you cause the bank more problems than you do bringing them in money, then they're more likely to ban you. Even in this example they're stating that you shouldn't use these words, just that they are required to investigate these words.
Also if they genuinely thought you were performing illegal activities they wouldn't tell you, they would had it off to the proper cover your ass department.
That being said, don't actually test what words bank monitor, since, as I mentioned, if you're a pain in the ass on purpose they'll probably drop you, or at the very least freeze funds for a long time.
My bank once disabled my access to my funds out of the blue and told me to come in person because they have to check stuff like terrorist funding for each client from time to time, same thing happened to a colleague. So banks blocking you suddenly and without warning is very much a thing
For real, "Hey, we're investigating you, good opportunity to hide your stuff now." And if a bank were literally concerned about terrorism (like HSBC?), I imagine they'd forward directly on to their legal department or law enforcement. Maybe. I dunno, I'm just some guy.
99% of my Venmos are for hookers and cocaine though.
Dropping business? PFFFFFT, see, that's why you're not a banker, you put silly things like possible threats and societal security above profits! Criminals and terrorists need banking services, banks can rat them out and come out as good guys, it's win-win!
There's no checkbox in a bank database for race. And there's no special rules for certain zip codes.
Banks judge you on two things:
- How much money you have
- How quickly your money moves (slower is better for them)
Your first and last name can be a giveaway. I know this is a UK bank but this has happened in the US:
No, we still do that if you're white and in a good zip code. I've done it myself, although I'd you're very nice and there's no written record that I know, I may give someone a heads up.
You didn’t pay for the terrorist bomb threat license?? Well too bad, no bomb threats for you!
I've heard people doing this and then getting black listed from the entire banking system. Can't open bank accounts, access any credit, and the banks don't have to tell you why you're blacklisted. It's supposed to be very very difficult to undo.
Can’t speak to this exactly, but it also happens to fraudsters and the like, after a few bad checks/transfers at different places and you are basically blacklisted from banking, literally no one will open you an account as they all seem to use same backend for fraud review known as ChexSystems Wiki here, iirc since it handles Credit but is not one of the “Big 3” they have to supply your report at request but only by mail request.
https://www.lendio.com/blog/blacklisted-by-chexsystems/
https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/countries/black-and-grey-lists.html
Thanks for the links. However, the first link seems to only concern the USA. That's of course still a good find.
The other two links, which are related, concern the classification of whole countries in relationship to the EU and not individuals. So that doesn't seem relevant here.
You havent truly lived unless you've been personally sanctioned by the international banking cartel.
the so called freedom fighters on the right when i make a $500 wire transfer with the description "supplies for firebombing majorie taylor greene's home on october 29th, 2027"
There's always at least one FBI agent at the US Embassy there. I'd guess there are probably a few more.
And to mess with my head, I saw there was a full FBI office in London. But then I saw it was London, Kentucky.
As if they’re not somehow sifting through foreign bank account payments, well the CIA at least.
CIA's either doing that and/or helping Colombian coke traffic. To catch the criminals, of course
We have our own agencies.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) is our equivalent to the FBI.
Security Service (a.k.a. MI5) is our equivalent to the NSA.
Secret Intelligence Service (a.k.a. MI6) is our equivalent to the CIA.
This is almost as hilarious as Matt Gaetz marking Tuition or School on his Venmo payments to kids
Almost seems like a bad idea to allow private companies to decide arbitrary criteria which they could block you from using the financial system (which is required to survive in a capitalist economy).
In the US, there's federal laws that ban using the banking system to fund terrorism. The bank would be legally compelled to investigate. This looks like it's likely in the UK, but I wouldn't be surprised if they have similar laws.