Organised crime launders cash through UK post offices
Hahaha fucking helllllllll just read this. So many thoughts. Like “this is how you actually do money laundering, not on Oxford Street” and “British deference to small businesses being honest and taxpaying is the problem”. (Writes a small business owner.) www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
John Bull37love the bot where the senior officer just sends an emoji to the reporter every time the post office confirm deposit numbers are up.
sianushka.bsky.social29So occasionally when I do a reporting trip I have to take large amounts of $USD out of the post office and I’m always so nervous that they think I’m money laundering and not, you know, just heading to a warzone
Taffy Osborne9This is great reporting. Why do we simply not require an ID to deposit cash? If you are depositing for multiple accounts, each one has a record of the person that made the deposit? Surely legitimate small business owners can't object to that?
Jo Clark8I always love the comments you get about how big business is avoiding taxes and taking money away from hardworking small business owners. Large multinationals undoubtedly work to minimise tax bills but some of the things I’ve seen from small business owners would make your hair hurt.
Jon Lawton8Smurfing the Post Office isn't too surprising given Lyca Mobile were bringing in bags with £1m in cash in them into Post Offices back in 2015. sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/mobile-...
Ben Darlow6When I worked as a software developer at a large bank I was required to take compliance training about KYC (know your customer) highlighting patterns of fraud, even though in my role I never went near any customer-facing systems or data. It’s absurd that there’s no similar requirement for POs.
ironeconomist.bsky.social76This looks like another massive problem that could easily be solved by the simple expedient of trying a little bit. Don’t even need the post office to do something, cash payments into accounts with this regularity and volume are intrinsically suspicious and should be flagged for review.
James Ball42"Unlike at a bank, the post office operative (often referred to as postmaster or subpostmaster) has no way to access any of the account details, and thus no way to check if the person with the card is its holder, or whether this transaction is part of a suspicious pattern"
⤵️35This is a great but also somewhat confusing story. Money launderers use post office counters to deposit cash in mule bank accounts: fine. Banks receive large deposits from post office counters to personal accounts that are immediately transferred out to crypto exchanges: very obvious thing to 🚨🚩
Tom Roberts24Really fascinating piece, my one small disagreement is that I think it brushes past how ineffective the SAR regime actually is, even for banks. The problem with "a pattern of transactions consistent with financial crime" is that the police don't really understand it, and don't have the support to.
Finn11it's wild that you will need more ID and be subject to more stringent AML checks buying 100 euros than depositing thousands of pounds into a bank account *at the same counter*
darcyswickham.bsky.social10How so much of the UK works now
Gavin Whenman4brb gonna spend 5 minutes thinking about all the anti-money laundering forms I filled in to prove the deposit on my flat was legit
gabbylm.bsky.social4they should get some sort of IT system to check this. I hear the Japanese make good ones
Shadow Hedgie 🌻4he's just like me fr
Mark O’Neill 🐻4A classic example of how government policy is developed in neat silos by well meaning but deeply naive people. That and the fact that the UK black economy is huge in size. www.gov.uk/government/p...
