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I have money in my American bank account. I send it through Western Union to my Mexican bank account. Then I go buy dollars at an exchange house. I do this to make a couple hundred dollars every time, just as extra money.

I travel to the USA almost every week carrying no more than $4,000 every time. Every time I go into the USA I get asked how much money I have on me, I always tell them with no problem whether I have 2, 3, or 4 thousand.

Yesterday, they asked me a lot of questions and made me fill in FinCEN Form 105 which I read is designed to declare more than 10,000 USD. I filled it in for the amount of $3592. However, the officers never answered my question: How often can I bring $10,000 or less without having to report it? Is it every week? Is it every month? Is it every time I go to the USA even if I go every day?

I felt that they made me fill that form that by law I was not required to do so. Can someone give me an answer?

Flux
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Hezrai Mejia
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2 Answers2

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Probably infinitely often, as there is no legal limit to bring cash in the US anyway.
If you carry more than 10000 US $ in cash, you are required to report it, but it is still legal. So instead of going a hundred times with 4k$, you could just take 400 k$ and tell them when you enter, and you'd be fine.

The limit is really to allow them to monitor very large amounts for legal possession and tax liability - as long as you can show that you legally own the amount, and paid due taxes when you made it, you can bring a billion in cash if you want.

Aganju
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It's complicated. Seek legal advice.

What you are doing is probably legal. However, there is a financial crime known as "structuring," where you deliberately make a series of smaller-than-$10k transactions to avoid hitting the $10k limit on any individual transaction. This prevents those transactions from being reported to the government. It's illegal, because the government wants to know about the overall movement of money regardless of how it is accomplished.

Officially, it's only a crime if you use multiple transactions "for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements of section 5316" (which is the $10k limit). If you have a valid reason to break your transactions up, unrelated to the $10k limit, then in theory you have done nothing wrong. However, the government tends to look very long and hard at large-but-not-quite-$10k transactions, especially when they occur multiple times or on a regular basis. If you intend to continue doing this, I would strongly advise consulting an attorney with experience in US financial law. Otherwise, it is possible that the government will seize your funds (on suspicion of a financial crime), freeze your US bank account (because that's where the money originated), and then you will have to pay for legal representation using whatever assets you have left. Of course, hiring a lawyer will not make this outcome impossible, but they can give you specific advice for your individual situation, and if you have already retained them, then they may be able to represent you in the event that things go wrong.

Kevin
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