The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a notice Wednesday detailing common errors on suspicious activity reports that filers should avoid.
Among the mistakes cited in the five-page document were empty or inadequate fields for telling the narrative of an activity; missing or incomplete identification and telephone numbers of filers; invalid Social Security numbers of subjects; and missing or incorrect information characterizing why an activity is suspicious.
"Although these errors were noted primarily" in reports from money-services businesses, "we believe publishing … ways much of them readily can be mitigated could be informative to financial institutions in other industries," Fincen said.
In a speech Wednesday at a conference of money service business regulators, Fincen Director James H. Freis Jr. said the document was not meant to propose "any new requirements," but the agency is "just trying to insure … that compliance officials accurately report the information that they already possess."
The complete document is available at www.fincen.gov.
