ACAMS Today Magazine (March-May 2011) Vol. 10 No. 2 | Page 38

PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS When to make the call to law enforcement K nowing when to file a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) or what documentation is required to open a new account is clearly defined by regulation or company policy. Deciding when to file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) is less clear and depends on an AML/CTF professional’s knowledge and personal experience to determine when something is not right. But when it comes to going beyond filing a SAR to contacting law enforcement directly, it can be a tough call. As a compliance officer, you may have struggled with the question of when to reach out to law enforcement and which agency you should call. The following law enforcement experts offer some guidelines to use when faced with these questions. If you feel the situation threatens irreparable damage, make the call, according to Rick Adams, a retired Special Agent with the IRS Criminal Division. “Call law enforcement if you feel there is going to be harm to the bank; harm to a depositor, for example accountholders wiring money to Nigeria or Canada because they have fallen victim to a lottery scam; or harm to another person, like elder abuse,” Adams said. “If you think the situation may cause harm to society, like potential terrorist activity, it should be reported immediately.” Before making the call, take time to assess the risk, Adams advises. If a transaction is just suspicious, like an unusual deposit pattern from one of your known customers, you should report it on a SAR, but not necessarily call law enforcement 38 Before making the call, take time to assess the risk “For example, if one of your customers has a video rental company and has had no suspicious activity for two years but now has a huge influx of cash, that’s suspicious,” Adams said. “But just because it might be unusual and suspicious, the activity isn’t over the top.” There are times though when unusual activities can become a pattern of ongoing and escalating suspicious transactions. When that happens, it’s time to reach out to law enforcement, according to Al Gillum, CAMS, president of Advanced Compliance Technologies, LLC, and a retired postal inspector. “Watch the SARs you are filing (on a person or company),” Gillum said. “If you start seeing a pattern over two or three weeks that the dollar values are significant and the activity is an ongoing process, it’s time to reach out to law enforcement. A rule of thumb I use is to call at the point the activity is reaching $50,000.” ACAMS TODAY | MARCH–MAY 2011 | ACAMS.ORG Jerry Loke, a retired IRS Agent and current member of the Philadelphia Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), adds a word of caution. For institutions that don’t have contacts within the law enforcement community or for a compliance officer who isn’t sure if an activity warrants a call to law enforcement, contacting the local SAR review team might be a better option. “In extreme situations, like those discussed above, law enforcement needs to be notified, but you do need to put some parameters in place,” Loke said. “Otherwise the calls could be overwhelming. Many of the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices have district SAR review teams in place. They review SARs weekly and meet once a month to bring SARs before the crossfunctional law enforcement team. In situations where you do not have a relationship with a SAR team, it may be best to communicate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office directly.” Who should you call? Once you decide to contact law enforcement, the next question is who to call. If you have law enforcement contacts, use them. If you don’t have contacts, notify the appropriate agency based on the type of crime. “Determine which agency to call,” Adams said. “If it is a terrorist activity, call the FBI. If it involves narcotics call the IRS or the DEA. If you suspect elder abuse, call local law enforcement.” If you don’t have law enforcement contacts now, develop them. Every compliance office should have multiple law enforcement contacts, according to Gillum. Build rela-