What your bank is not telling you about your cash deposits and withdrawals.

I'm sure you have heard that if you deposit or withdrawal more than $10,000 in a day, you will have to fill out a CTR, "currency transaction report". This well known and something all banks must comply with. This CTR is filed with FinCen or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network which is a bureau of the United States Department of Treasury. They're simply looking for money laundering and financial crimes. If you are on the up and up, you are fine. Do your transaction over $10,000 and don't give the bank a hard time. Doing a CTR is not a bad thing. Banks do thousands of them a day. If a CTR is required you will know about it because they have to ask you questions. But there is a side most banking customers don't know or truly understand. Something that can have even more of an impact on you and your family. That would be a SAR, "suspicious activity report". When your bank files a SAR, you will not know about it. This is where it can get tricky.
The banks and government know that most customers are aware of of the $10,000 rule for doing a CTR. This has been a game with those trying to dodge any reporting in hopes of not getting flagged for the governments enjoyment. Many customers will bring their cash deposits, or withdrawals to just under the threshold of $10,000 believing they will go under the radar for reporting. Some will drop their deposit/withdrawal to $5,000 or maybe $4,000. That may work and go undetected a few times, but the tellers are trained to catch on to these types of transactions. When a customer is suspected of structuring their transactions to avoid reporting, they will get a SAR placed on their account. This SAR will impact all owners of that account even if it's you that's doing the naughty. Your spouse, parents, siblings, friends on that account? It doesn't matter. When you hear of someone that says "My bank closed my accounts for no reason", just remember that's probably why the account was closed. Banks don't close accounts for no reason.
Just a few years back, the banks were so behind on processing any SAR completed on a customer that when a teller would complete a SAR, it could take months for compliance to review the information. Tellers were told to only do the SAR once rather than every time the customer does something the teller feels is sketchy. Now days, compliance for all big banks have been ramped up and tellers have been given the green light to SAR every time they feel it's deserved. During the last financial crisis of 2008, banks where caught with their pants down on many things around compliance. Have they fixed their bigger problems? Of course not, but they still can make sure the typical customer is regulated.
Does having a SAR placed on your account mean your accounts will be closed and possibly reported? No, but it can lead to more monitoring by the bank which could lead up to closing your relationship.
With over 20 years experience in banking, here's my advice. Banks are in the business of making money. They don't want to report or close your accounts. They just want customers that will not put their bank in a compliance nightmare. If you need to withdrawal or deposit more than $10,000 in cash and you are not committing a crime, just do it. It's better to get the CTR out of the way than have the bank employees report your behaviors when you are simply taking care of buiness.
This is my first post. Hope it was worth the read. Thanks