US Bank placing a hold on funds from my paycheck deposit: Why does that make sense?
It is possible that they only do the hold on the first deposit from a given source. It is probably worth asking if they intend to do the hold on every paycheck or just the first one. "First, congratulations on the paycheck!  :-) On the holds: Is it possible that by allowing your account balance to go negative (into overdraft) that you triggered such treatment of your account?  Perhaps the bank is being more cautious with your account since that happened.  Just how long did you have their $150 on hold?  ;-) Or, perhaps it's not you specifically but the bank is being more cautious due to credit conditions that have been prevalent these last years.  Consider: allowing you to cash a check immediately – when it technically hasn't cleared yet – is a form of credit.  Maybe it isn't you they don't trust well enough yet, but the company that issued the check?  Checks bounce, and not by fault of the depositor. I once had a new account, years ago, and discovered a 5 day hold on deposits.  The irony was it was a check drawn on the same bank!  I called my banker and asked about it – and suggested I'd take my business back to my old bank.  I was in the process of applying for a mortgage with the new bank.  Holds were removed. But you may have some trouble with the ""I'll walk"" technique given the climate and your recent overdraft situation and no leverage – or if you do have some leverage, consider using it. But before you assume anything, I would, as JohnFx suggested, ask your bank about it.  Pay your branch a visit in person and talk to the manager.  Phone calls to customer service may be less successful.  If it's not a big issue and more a minor technical policy one, the bank may remove the holds.  If they won't, the manager ought to tell you why, and what you can do to solve it eventually."
I'd suggest you contact the Office of the Controller of Currency, who regulates BOA and file a complaint. This whole deal seems shady.  According to the OCC FAQ, the fact that they closed the account is in their prerogative. However, I would think they are obligated to quickly return your funds, but can't find anything specific to that. The banks are very sensitive to having complaints filed against them, so if nothing else this may encourage them to be more helpful, even if your complaint isn't actionable. OCC Complaint Process. This topic on how long a bank can hold a large deposit before making funds available may also be helpful. "See ""Structuring transactions to evade reporting requirement prohibited."" You absolutely run the risk of the accusation of structuring. One can move money via check, direct transfer, etc, all day long, from account to account, and not have a reporting issue. But, cash deposits have a reporting requirement (by the bank) if $10K or over. Very simple, you deposit $5000 today, and $5000 tomorrow. That's structuring, and illegal.  Let me offer a pre-emptive ""I don't know what frequency of $10000/X deposits triggers this rule. But, like the Supreme Court's, ""We have trouble defining porn, but we know it when we see it. And we're happy to have these cases brought to us,"" structuring is similarly not 100% definable, else one would shift a bit right."" You did not ask, but your friend runs the risk of gift tax issues, as he's not filing the forms to acknowledge once he's over $14,000." "The simplest answer to why you can't see it in your online statement is a design/business decision that was made, most probably originally to make online statements differ as little as possible from old fashioned monthly printed statements; the old printed statements never showed holds either. Some banks and card services actually do show these transactions online, but in my experience these are the rare exceptions - though with business/commercial accounts I saw this more, but it was still rare. This is also partly due to banks fearing lots of annoying phone calls from customers and problems with merchants, as people react to ""hey, renting that car didn't cost $500!"" and don't realize that the hold is often higher than the transaction amount and will be justified in a few days (or weeks...), etc - so please don't dispute the charges just yet. Behind the scenes, I've had bankers explain it to me thusly (the practice has bitten me before and it bothered me a lot, so I've talked to quite a few bankers about this): There are two kinds of holds: ""soft holds"" and ""hard holds"". In a soft hold, a merchant basically asks the bank, ""Hey, is there at least $75 in this account?"" The bank responds, and then has it's own individually set policy per account type as to how to treat that hold. Sometimes they reserve no money whatsoever - you are free to spend that money right out and rack up NSF fees to your heart's content. Yet some policies are to treat this identically to a hard hold and keep the money locked down until released. The hard hold is treated very much like an actual expenditure transaction, in that the money is locked and shown as no longer available to you. This varies by bank - some banks use an ""Account Balance"" and an ""Available Balance"", and some have done away with these dual terms and leave it up to you to determine what your balance is and what's ""available"" (or you have to call them). The key difference in the hard hold and a real expenditure is, technically, the money is still in your bank account; your bank has merely ""reserved"" it, earmarking it for a specific purchase (and gently promising the merchant they can have their money later), but the biggest difference is there is a time-limit. If a merchant does not process a completion to the transaction to claim the money, your bank will lift the hold after a period of time (I've seen 7-30 days as typical in the US, again varying by institution) returning your money to your balance that is available for purchasing and withdrawal. In every case, any vaguely decent banking institution allows you to call them, speak to some bank employee, and they can look up your account and inform you about the different sort of holds that are on your account that are not pending/completed purchase transactions. From a strictly cynical (perhaps rightly jaded) point of view, yes this is also used as a method to extort absurdly high fees especially from customers who keep a low balance in their account. I have had more than one bank charge NSF fees based on available balances that were due to holds made by gas pumps, for instance, even though my actual ""money in my account"" never went below $0 (the holds were for amounts larger than the actual transaction). And yes, the banks usually would waive those fees if you bothered to get someone on the phone or in person and made yourself a nuisance to the right person for long enough, but they made you work for it. But I digress.... The reality is that there are lots of back and forth and middle-men in transactions like this, and most banks try to hide as much of this from you the client as possible, partly because its a huge confusing hassle and its part of why you are paying a bank to handle this nonsense for you to start with.  And, as with all institutions, rules and policies become easily adjusted to maximize revenues, and if you don't keep sizable liquid minimum balances (100% of the time, all year long) they target you for fees.  To avoid this without having fat wads of extra cash in those accounts, is use an entirely disconnected credit card for reservations ONLY - especially when you are traveling and will be making rentals and booking hotels. Just tell them you wish to pay with a different card when you are done, and most merchants can do this without hassle. Since it's a credit card with monthly billing you can often end up with no balance, no waiting around for a month for payments to clear, and no bank fees! It isn't 100%, but now I never - if I can possibly avoid it - use my debit/bank card to ""reserve"" or ""rent"" anything, ever." Yes, but it's a matter of paper trail and lifestyle. Your $600K guy may get questioned when he makes the deposit, but would show the record of having that money elsewhere. People buy cars with cash (a check) all the time. The guy filing a tax return claiming little to no income or no return at all, is more likely to get flagged than the $100K+ earning couple who happened to be able to save to buy their $25K car every 10 years with cash.  On reading the article, the bank had its own concerns. The guy who was trying to withdraw the money was elderly, and the bank seemed pretty concerned to make sure he wasn't about to be scammed. It may not be spelled out as such, but a custodian of one's money does have an obligation to not be party to a potential scam, and the very request for such a huge sum of money in cash is a red flag. This just happened to me with a Wells Fargo Bill Pay check.  WF put a stop payment on the check. The money was taken out of my account immediately yet it is going to take 3-5 days to reappear in the account.  I question these banking practices.  Georgia Bank and Trust Company of GA does not do this.  The Bill Pay check is processed just like a hand written check; when the check clears the bank your account is debited. If it is an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) then the money does come out of your account immediately, of course. These are acceptable banking practices to me.  I will be closing the Wells Fargo account. These unclaimed wages were presumably yours for the taking in Year X when employer paid your other wages.  Maybe this is just about uncashed paychecks.  In that case, they would have appeared on your W-2 for that year.  If you filed your return including that W-2 income, then this is likely not new income. This would be a constructive receipt evaluation.  Income occurs when you have the right to income, whether or not you have actual receipt of it.  For example, if you are paid via cash drops into a piggy bank but you wait a week (for the start of a new tax period) to withdraw your cash from the piggy bank, then the money was constructively received on the day it went into the piggy bank.  This prevents taxpayers from structuring their actual receipt of income, for tax purposes or otherwise, in ways at odds with their true economic position.  You can't delay taxable income that is legally yours simply by refusing to accept it when you have the right to it. The wages were income at the time your employer proffered the paycheck.  You did not cash it, but I suspect that you filed it on that year's taxes.  There's a slight wrinkle that when the check went stale your ability to access the money was not so straightforward.  However, you still had the legal right to the money, so my perspective is that the analysis did not change when the check went stale. If I understand correctly you describe putting a hold on an appartment as such: A sum of money that you give to the owner of the appartment to let them hold it for you because you are probably going to rent. In case you back out of the deal, this money can mitigate the expected loss from turning down other candidates. After asking them to hold the appartment for you, you decided not to rent. Also, you used the bank to get back the hold sum. Regardless of the legal details, it seems very clear to me that after putting down a hold and walking away, you should not get the money back.  There may have been some things that distracted/confused you (call about the key), but if you actually look at the things that happened it seems both right and practical to pay them their reclaimed hold as soon as possible. Banks do not report transactions within accounts except as required by law, usually as part of anti-money-laundering efforts. Generally those involve tracking large cash transactions. As far as large payments go, there are two reasons they might be reported to the government: taxes, and criminal investigations. For tax purposes, if the payment is considered a salary or wage (that is, you are an employee of the company and the payment is for your time working there), then the company paying you is responsible for reporting the wage and withholding applicable taxes from your salary. If you are considered an independent contract employee, then you yourself will be responsible for reporting the income to the IRS and paying the applicable taxes yourself. In the second case, unless you are already under investigation, I wouldn't worry about it. Banks are very touchy about financial records being kept private, and won't release them without a subpoena. One caveat is that this is under US law. Banks which maintain branches in multiple countries must, of course, comply with all local laws in the jurisdiction where they do business. The take away from this is that Bank of America is unlikely to report a single deposit of $75,000 into your account to anyone on their own. If it is a paper check being deposited they will probably place a hold on it to make sure it clears, but that is all. For those who don't know, credit card checks are blank checks that your credit card company sends you.  When you fill them out and spend them, you are taking a cash advance on your credit card account.  You should be aware that taking a cash advance on your credit card normally has extra fees and finance charges above what you have with regular credit card transactions. That having been said, when you take one of these to your bank and try to deposit them, it is entirely up to bank policy how long they will make you wait to use these funds.  They want to be sure that it is a legitimate check and that it will be honored.  If your teller doesn't know the answer to that question, you'll need to find someone at the bank who does.  If you don't like the answer they give you, you'll need to find another bank. I would think that if the credit card is from Chase, and you are trying to deposit a credit card check into a Chase checking account, they should be able to do that instantly.  However, bank policy doesn't always make sense. The victim never actually receives the money, so that is not an option. The scammer generates the transaction using a fraudulent check. Once the check is found to be fraudulent the chain of involved banks claw the money back (which is the bank's money, not the scammer's). So, what happens is the victim sees a deposit in their account, but it is not real, it is a conditional deposit by the bank made on the assumption that the payment is good (which it is not). When the victim endorses a check, they are guaranteeing to the bank that they consider the check good and vouching for the check. That is why the bank credits the victim's account, because the victim has vouched for the check. When the check later turns out to be fraudulent, the victim owes the bank money. In theory, people who endorse a fraudulent check could be criminally prosecuted, but that does not happen normally. "As to where the interest comes from: The same place it comes from in other kinds of savings accounts. The bank takes the money you deposit and invests it elsewhere, traditionally by lending it out to others (hence the concept of a ""savings and loan"" bank). They make a profit as long as the interest they give for ""borrowing"" from you, plus the cost of administering the savings accounts and loans, is less than the interest they charge for lending to others. No, they don't have to pay you interest -- but if they didn't, you'd be likely to deposit your funds at another bank which did. Their ideal goal is to pay as little as possible without losing depositors, while charging as much as possible without losing borrowers. (yeah, I know, typo corrected) Why do they get higher interest rate than they pay you? Mostly because your deposits and interest are essentially guaranteed, whereas the folks they're lending to may be late paying or default on those loans. As with any kind of investment, higher return requires more work and/or higher risk, plus (ususally) larger reserves so you can afford to ride out any losses that do occur." Just FYI for the benefit of future users. Haven't been paid yet nor have I paid but some interesting facts. I decided to sign the contract with the person who approached me. The contract seemed harmless whereby I only transfer money once I retrieve the funds. Thanks to your comments here I also understood that I must make sure the funds really cleared in my account and can never be cancelled before I transfer anything.  He gave me the information of the check that matched my previous employer and made sense as it was a check issues just after I had left my job and the state. I did not used the contact details he provided me, but rather found the direct contact details of the go to person in my last institution and contacted them.  I still haven't been able to reclaim the funds, but that is due to internal problems between the state comptroller and my institution. Will come back to update if I am ever successful, but the bottom line is that it is probably not a scam. I am waiting for the final resolution of the case before I post the name of the company which approached me (if it is at all OK per the discussion board rules) Remote Deposit usually means a scanner and some software and has a monthly fee associated with it (so it only makes sense for businesses, and even then only some businesses). Chase and USAA allow you to make deposits via your iPhone which is aimed at consumers and has some deposit limits associated with it (checks have to be less than some $$). I've used both.  Remote Deposit is super easy, the software usually sucks, but it's too expensive for personal users ($60/month at citibank).  Chase deposits have worked on my iPhone usually after 2 or 3 tries but that did save me from walking to the bank. "This will happen automatically when you open an interest-bearing account with a bank.   You didn't think that banks just kept all that cash in a vault somewhere, did you?  That's not the way modern banking works.   Today (and for a long, long time) banks will keep only a small fraction of their deposits on hand (called the ""reserve"") to fund daily withdrawals and other operations.  The rest they routinely lend out to other customers, which is how they pay for their operations (someone has to pay all those tellers, branch managers, loan officers) and pay interest on your deposits, as well as a profit for their owners (it's not a charity service).  The fees charged for loan origination, as well as the difference between the loan interest rate and the deposit rate, make up the profit.   Banks rarely hold their own loans.  Instead, they will sell the loans in portfolios to investors, sometimes retaining servicing rights (they continue to collect the payments and pass them on) and sometimes not (the payments are now due to someone else).  This allows them to make more loans.   Banks may sometimes not have enough capital on hand.  In this case, they can make inter-bank loans to meet their short-term needs.  In some cases, they'll take those loans from a government central bank.  In the US, this is ""The Fed"", or the Federal Reserve Bank.   In the US, back around the late 1920's, and again in the 1980's some banks experienced a ""run"", or a situation where people lost confidence in the bank and wanted to withdraw their money.  This caused the bank to have insufficient funds to support the withdrawals, so not everyone got their money.  People panicked, and others wanted to take their money out, which caused the situation to snowball.  This is how many banks failed.  (In the '80s, it was savings-and-loans that failed - still a kind of ""bank"".)  Today, we have the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) to protect depositors.  In the crashes in the early 2000's, many banks closed up one night and opened the next in a conservatorship, and then were literally doing business as a new bank without depositors (necessarily) even knowing.  This protected the consumers.  The bank (as a company) and its owners were not protected." Banks can't simply make loans in the void. This is how the cash flow works, generally:  1. Depositers *add* cash into the bank. The Bank now has cash. 10% of that cash is held on *reserve* per law. This cash is held on the balance sheet as an *asset* (cash) *and a liability* (demand deposits).   2. Someone requests a loan. The loan is funded from the non-reserved cash of these deposits. This results in a lessening of an asset (cash), and the creation of a new asset (loan).  3. Traditionally, as the debtor pays back the loan, the interest is distributed in some sort of split between the bank and the depositors. This means cash in from the loan and interest, and a liability (deposits) also go up.  4. Alternatively, while the above still happens, the bank can *securitize* the loan and sell that to investors. Investors then get access to the loan and its income, and the bank collects a fee. However, this means more cash on hand for the bank to originate additional loans without going near the reserve requirement.   If a bank extends too many loans and its reserve is threatened, it must borrow either from the fed or from other banks. These loans must be paid back.