Santander ID and income check

GeoffTF

Prompted by this thread, I have made up a new spreadsheet for the last financial year. That spreadsheet records all the cash flows into my Santander current account. That is information that Santander already has, but I can repeat it back to them if asked. I also have my tax records, so I can give them my taxable income and, if prompted, my realised capital gains.

I am trying to keep things simple. I have Santander as my main account. I use my backup Nationwide account for small debit card payments and credit card payments. I use the Skipton for holding modest amounts of cash. I have term accounts maturing every six months, and I am moving the proceeds to Scottish Widows Share Dealing. I also receive gilt coupons, an annual dividend and the proceeds of my annual CGT sale. I am not doing any unnecessary recycling, but I am surprised at how much money moves through my Santander account.

friolento

Several days after the check, Santander have confirmed by email that they now have reviewed my “request to change your details” (eh? I didn’t request anything, Santander - you did), and that they have updated their records. So it appears that a human check is carried out their end. The good news is that they have not requested any further details or proof of incomes.

Mr_Sark

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82097279#Comment_82097279

I'm stuck too, (joint account) we transfer money from elsewhere each month to cover direct debits and bills, as the account is used for household expenditure. There's no option for showing this, just various forms of income. I've tried contacting them via online chat, but getting nowhere fast at present.

GeoffTF

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82116583#Comment_82116583

What is the problem? Your income is your income, wherever it goes.

StewedApple

How even low-level organised crime sidesteps the KYC nonsense honest people are harried with:-

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/25/other-post-office-scandal-organised-crime-launders-money-high-street

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82116782#Comment_82116782

This is presumably one of the reasons why banks are being required to perform the latest round of more intrusive checks, and why the FCA has pushed out guidance to banks around closure of unused accounts that pose a risk of being compromised and used for this sort of thing. The idea that this sort of activity wouldn't have been flagged, even back then, is perplexing.

There ought to be some massive fines in the wings for those banks who had accounts receiving multiple large cash deposits from many different post offices and didn't detect anything was amiss.

eskbanker

The idea that this sort of activity wouldn't have been flagged, even back then, is perplexing.

There ought to be some massive fines in the wings for those banks who had accounts receiving multiple large cash deposits from many different post offices and didn't detect anything was amiss.

Indeed - the implication that checks on substantial cash deposits are only applied to those made within bank branches beggars belief!

mta999

I think the article was trying to say (at least in part) that the money is going from multiple Post Offices /convenience stores etc to multiple mule accounts (where people get a small cut for forwarding the money on)

This is possible because no checksl seem to be done on the debit card when the money is deposited

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82117038#Comment_82117038

It highlighted a single example of "Gheewala’s bank account [that] received more than £880,000 in cash in 200 different deposits", describing the mule's typical morning as driving from PO branch to PO branch and making deposits minutes apart and resulting in "thousands of pounds deposited in an hour or so" across 5 separate PO branches. These would be deposits of £4-5k each based on that total. I'm with eskbanker that it beggars belief this was allowed to continue to a total of 200 deposits into that one bank account.

The way the system works, the pattern would only be visible to the bank, but, as described, it seems like someone could pay large sums of cash over the PO counter without an ID check (which could easily have been passed in this case, as Gheewala was using his own bank account).

It seems like separately to that there were a bunch of other accounts being used so the total volume laundered was much higher, and perhaps that's where checking ID could have helped.

mta999

That's not how I read it, but probably I am wrong

Yes the account in question received £880,000 but not in cash - the cash was paid into multiple mule accounts and then forwarded (presumably as ordinary faster payments) to Gheewala’s account