Structuring Defense Lawyer

A federal structuring charge under 31 U.S.C. § 5324 rarely opens with a question about where the money came from. It opens with a pattern. A bank compliance system flags a run of cash deposits, a report goes to the federal government, and an agent pulls months of account history before anyone knocks on a door. The people this statute reaches most often are small-business operators who handle currency every day, and many of them first hear about the reporting rules after their account has already been restrained.

Structuring is an offense about purpose rather than about the origin of the funds. Money earned lawfully can still support a charge, which surprises restaurant owners, convenience-store operators, contractors, salon owners, and medical practices who assumed that a clean source of income answered everything. What the government has to establish is that transactions were arranged so that a required currency report would not be filed.

That is also where the defense starts. Deposit patterns have ordinary explanations: an insurance rider that caps currency held on the premises overnight, an armored-carrier schedule, branch hours, the rhythm of weekly receipts, and different employees running the deposit on different days. The work is to rebuild that reality out of records before the government’s chronology hardens into a charging decision. Law Offices Of SRIS, P.C. represents people under investigation and under indictment for structuring in the Eastern District of Virginia. To discuss a matter, call (888) 437-7747.

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What 31 U.S.C. § 5324 Actually Prohibits

The statute makes it an offense to structure, to assist in structuring, or to attempt to structure any transaction with one or more domestic financial institutions for the purpose of evading the currency reporting requirements that federal law places on those institutions. The same section reaches conduct aimed at the report itself: causing or attempting to cause a financial institution to fail to file a required report, and causing or attempting to cause it to file a report containing a material omission or misstatement of fact.

Two features of that text carry most of the defense weight. The first is that the prohibited act is defined by its purpose. Dividing a sum into several transactions is not, standing alone, the offense. The transactions have to be arranged in order to keep a report from being filed as required. The second is that the reporting duty belongs to the institution rather than to the customer. A depositor is not charged with failing to file anything. The charge is that the depositor shaped the transactions so the institution would not have to.

The section is not limited to banks. It also covers transactions structured to evade the cash-reporting duties that fall on trades and businesses outside the financial sector when they take in currency in the course of business, and transactions structured to evade the report that accompanies currency moving across the border. Which branch of the statute the government invokes changes the proof and changes the records that matter.

How These Investigations Begin

Almost every structuring matter starts inside a bank. Transaction monitoring software scores deposit activity, a compliance analyst examines the account, and a report goes to the federal government. None of that process is visible to the customer. By the time an agent appears, the account history has usually been read, the deposit slips have been sorted by date and teller, and a chart has been built.

The next step is often an unannounced visit to the business or the home, framed as a few informal questions about banking habits. That conversation is the most consequential event in many structuring cases, because the purpose element is easier to prove from a person’s own explanation than from a deposit chart. An answer meant to sound cooperative can be written into a report and quoted back at trial. Declining to discuss the matter until counsel is retained is not evidence of anything.

Grand jury subpoenas follow: bank records, point-of-sale data, the bookkeeper’s files, the accountant’s workpapers, and sometimes the testimony of employees who made deposits without knowing why the schedule looked the way it did. Employees who are subpoenaed have exposure of their own to consider and may need separate counsel, which is a question to raise early rather than after inconsistent accounts have been given.

Cash Businesses and the Purpose Element

A deposit pattern is data. What it means is an inference, and the inference is contestable. Businesses that take in currency operate under constraints that shape how and when money reaches the bank, and those constraints leave a documentary trail that predates the investigation.

Commercial insurance policies frequently cap the amount of currency that may be held on the premises, and the carrier writes that cap into the policy. Safes have a rated capacity. Armored-carrier contracts fix pickup days. Branches close, and night-drop practice varies. An owner with several locations may bank them separately because each is a separate entity with its own books. A manager may deposit what a shift produced rather than waiting to aggregate. None of that is a legal argument on its own, but together it is the alternative explanation the purpose element has to overcome.

There is also the question of advice. Owners are sometimes told by a teller, a branch manager, a bookkeeper, or an accountant that smaller deposits mean less paperwork. If that conversation happened, when it happened and what was said are worth establishing while the people involved still remember. Advice from someone the client reasonably relied on speaks directly to the purpose the government has to prove.

Seizure of the Account and the Forfeiture Track

In many structuring matters the account is restrained or seized before any charge is filed, and the practical consequences arrive immediately. Payroll does not clear. Rent, suppliers, and tax deposits stop. Clients frequently describe the seizure, rather than the criminal exposure, as the event that threatens the business.

Forfeiture proceeds on its own track, with its own filings and its own deadlines fixed by statute. Those deadlines are not the same as the criminal calendar, and missing one can cost an argument that was otherwise available. Confirm the current deadlines against the governing text with counsel rather than relying on any general description of them, including this one.

The lawful source of the funds sits differently in each track. It does not by itself answer the structuring element, because the offense is defined by the purpose of the transactions. It is central, however, to the forfeiture claim and to how the matter is resolved overall. Documenting where the currency came from, through sales records, tax filings, and reconciliations, is work that pays in both proceedings, and it should begin before the government finishes building its own version.

How Sentencing Is Actually Calculated

The statutory ceiling for a structuring conviction is set by 31 U.S.C. § 5324 and should be confirmed against the current text of the section with counsel. What drives the outcome in practice is the sentencing guidelines calculation, and that calculation is assembled from facts a defense can contest long before a sentencing date.

The starting point is the value of the funds involved, applied through a table that raises the offense level as the figure rises. Which transactions count is a genuine dispute in structuring cases. The government tends to sweep in an entire deposit series, while the defense position is often that only a subset reflects the conduct charged. Narrowing that figure is frequently where a defense finds room to move.

Adjustments follow. Whether the currency came from unlawful activity, and whether the defendant knew that it did, is treated separately from the structuring conduct itself. Sophisticated means, the defendant’s role relative to others, obstruction, and acceptance of responsibility each move the calculation. So does the defendant’s history, and so do the sentencing factors the court weighs independently of the guidelines range, which include the nature of the offense, the characteristics of the defendant, and the need to avoid unwarranted disparity.

Because the guidelines figure is assembled from contested facts rather than handed down, the record built during the investigation frequently sets the range before any plea is entered.

Responding Before the Charging Decision

Structuring cases are unusually responsive to work done before an indictment, because the theory rests on an inference about purpose that is still open at that stage. Once a grand jury has returned counts, the same material has to be argued against a fixed charging document.

Preservation comes first. Ordinary retention schedules that delete point-of-sale data, security footage, deposit logs, and email have to be suspended in writing. Deletion that would have been routine becomes an obstruction question once an investigation is known.

The second task is assembling the record that explains the pattern: bank statements, daily sales reports, armored-carrier logs, the insurance policy and its currency limit, safe specifications, staffing schedules, and the correspondence of the accountant. The third is deciding whether to make a submission to the prosecutor before a charging decision, and what to put in it. That decision is fact-specific and carries risk, because anything submitted can be used, and it is made with counsel after the file is understood.

Employees, partners, and family members who signed deposit slips have exposure of their own. Sorting out who needs separate counsel, and doing it before anyone gives an account, keeps a conflict from forming around the case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it still structuring if the money was earned legally?

The origin of the funds is not an element. The offense is defined by the purpose of the transactions, so currency from a lawful business can support a charge if the government proves the transactions were arranged to keep a required report from being filed. The lawful source still matters a great deal, because it bears on the forfeiture claim, on how the guidelines calculation is built, and on how the matter is resolved. It is documented early rather than raised late.

What does the government have to prove about my intent?

It has to prove that the transactions were arranged for the purpose of evading a currency reporting requirement, which requires proof that the person was aware of that requirement. Exactly how the mental state is framed for a jury comes from the current text of the section and from the instructions the district court gives. Defense counsel litigates the wording of those instructions, because a small difference in how purpose is described can decide the case.

The government seized my account. Can I get the funds back?

A seizure starts a separate proceeding with its own filings and its own statutory deadlines, and a claim has to be made in the correct form and on time. Whether funds are returned depends on the basis asserted for the seizure and on what the records show about the source of the currency and the purpose of the transactions. Because the deadlines are statutory, confirm them with counsel immediately rather than waiting to see how the criminal case develops.

An agent wants to ask me about my deposits. Should I answer?

That conversation is often where the purpose element is decided, because an explanation in a person’s own words is stronger evidence than a deposit chart. Incomplete or inaccurate answers create separate exposure on top of the structuring question. Declining to discuss the matter until counsel is retained is a lawful response and carries no penalty. Counsel can then arrange an interview on defined terms, or decline one, once the file is actually understood.

My bookkeeper made the deposits. Am I still exposed?

Possibly, and so is the bookkeeper. The section reaches assisting in structuring as well as structuring, so a person who arranged transactions on someone else’s instruction and a person who gave the instruction can both fall within it. Who knew what, and who set the deposit schedule, becomes the central factual question. Because interests can diverge quickly between an owner and a staff member, separate counsel is usually raised before anyone gives an account.

How long does an investigation run before charges?

There is no fixed period, and matters vary widely. What is predictable is the sequence: institutional reporting, records collection, interviews, grand jury subpoenas, then a charging decision. Clients often learn of an investigation well after it began, which is why the response starts with establishing how far it has already gone. Counsel can sometimes learn the posture through contact with the prosecutor without disclosing anything about the client.

Where would a case like this be heard?

Structuring matters arising in Northern Virginia and central Virginia are prosecuted in the Eastern District of Virginia. The district sets criminal matters on a short schedule, which compresses the time available for defense investigation once an indictment has been returned. That pace is the main reason work done in the period before charges carries so much weight in these cases.

Working With Law Offices Of SRIS, P.C.

The period before an indictment is where a structuring case is shaped, because the records that explain a deposit pattern are easier to assemble before the government has fixed its own account of them.

Mr. Sris, Owner and Founder of Law Offices Of SRIS, P.C., is a former prosecutor and is admitted in Virginia, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and New York. The firm has been practicing since 1997. Mr. Sris and the firm’s Of Counsel attorneys handle criminal defense matters across those jurisdictions, which matters in federal practice because a single investigation frequently reaches conduct, witnesses, and records in more than one state. Mr. Sris brings a background in accounting and information systems from George Mason University, applied to complex financial and technology-related cases.

The firm serves Northern Virginia from 1655 Fort Myer Dr, Suite 700, Room 719, Arlington, VA 22209 and central Virginia from 7400 Beaufont Springs Drive, Suite 300, Room 395, Richmond, VA 23225. By appointment. Call (888) 437-7747 to schedule. Request a consultation. Reach our location at (888) 437-7747.

This page provides general information about structuring charges under 31 U.S.C. § 5324 and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Case results depend on a variety of factors unique to each case. Results may vary.

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A structuring case is one part of fraud & financial crimes work, and our page on bank fraud defence covers the wider process.