The best way to combat money laundering is to prevent dirty money from entering into the financial system. The currency transaction report, or CTR, was designed to help financial institutions keep that from happening. In this course, we'll discuss all the basics of CTRs: how they work, when to use them, where they go, and the information you're required to keep.

Now that we know how currency transaction reports (CTRs) work and the requirements for filing them, we're going to teach you how to file them. This process will vary depending on where you work, so check with your financial institution on their specific requirements. In this course, we'll go over collecting verification information and where to properly record it. We'll discuss the four sections of the CTR and how to complete them. We'll also talk about what to do when customers are inconvenienced or frustrated by the CTR filing requirements.

At the most basic level, regulatory compliance is all about risk management. In this course, we'll discuss one important way to manage risks when it comes to money laundering: the suspicious activity report, or SAR. These are documents that financial institutions must file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. We'll talk about what circumstances require these documents, go over who can file them, and list what information should be included. We'll also cover the confidentiality requirements of suspicious activity reports, what happens if you're wrong in filing a SAR, and some other general rules of filing these reports.

As part of the USA PATRIOT Act, financial institutions are required to have customer identification programs, or CIPs. This helps prove customer identities, which is a key part in fighting money laundering schemes. In this course, we'll talk about what this means to you as a bank employee. We'll discuss the important distinction between customers and consumers, as they relate to BSA/AML. We'll go over who this rule applies to and the specific information you're required to collect to verify identification. We'll also look at specific recordkeeping rules for CIPs.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, is a division of the Treasury Department. Their role is to administer and enforce economic sanctions programs against countries or groups of individuals such as terrorists and traffickers. When economic sanctions are initiated, OFAC is responsible for ensuring that no one conducts business with that entity and that sanction guidelines are followed. In this program, we'll go over how these sanctions work, review screening against the Specially Designated Nationals List, or SDN, and cover what to do if someone who's flagged tries to bank with you.

You should already be familiar with BSA/AML regulations and some of the red flags for money laundering. So in this course, we're going to dive a bit deeper, while doing a review of those red flags. We'll go over various ways that wire transfers are used to launder money, and we'll also discuss unusual activities to stay aware of. However, it's important to note that none of the activities we're discussing in the course are illegal on their own. Successful money laundering is a layered, complex process, almost never involving a single transaction.