What the Government Must Prove in a Structuring Case

Knowledge that structuring is illegal is not an element. Purpose to evade the Currency Transaction Report (“CTR”) is.

A cash business splits $18,000 into two $9,000 deposits on consecutive days. Each slip is under $10,000. Some shops treat that as the end of the reporting problem.

Section 5324(a)(3) does not ask how large any one deposit was. It asks why the cash was broken up. The crime is evading the report a domestic financial institution would have had to file if the transaction had been left whole. 31 U.S.C. § 5324(a)(3).

What § 5324(a)(3) Says

No person shall, for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements of section 5313(a), “structure or assist in structuring, or attempt to structure or assist in structuring, any transaction with one or more domestic financial institutions.” 31 U.S.C. § 5324(a)(3).

The purpose clause is the mens rea. The government does not have to prove the defendant knew structuring was a crime.

Treasury defined the verb. A person structures a transaction by conducting “one or more transactions in currency, in any amount, at one or more financial institutions, on one or more days, in any manner,” for the purpose of evading the CTR rules. “The transaction or transactions need not exceed the $10,000 reporting threshold at any single financial institution on any single day in order to constitute structuring within the meaning of this definition.” 31 C.F.R. § 1010.100(xx).

The definition is not limited to one teller, one branch, or one calendar day.

The report being evaded is the CTR. A domestic financial institution must file on a currency transaction of more than $10,000. 31 C.F.R. § 1010.311. A $10,000 deposit is not that transaction. A $10,000.01 deposit is. The bank files the form. The customer who never sees it can still be the defendant.

The Elements

The Fifth Circuit has already reduced the current statute to three elements. “To prove a structuring offense, the government must prove the defendant (1) engaged in structuring; (2) did so with the knowledge that the financial institutions involved in the transaction were obligated to report currency transactions involving more than $10,000; and (3) intended to evade this reporting requirement.” United States v. Suarez, 966 F.3d 376, 383 (5th Cir. 2020).

Knowledge of the bank’s duty. Acts of structuring. Purpose to evade that duty.

The 2024 criminal pattern instruction in this Circuit recites the same three, then adds a fourth only if the indictment charges the § 5324(d)(2) enhancer: the defendant violated the statute while violating another federal law, or as part of a pattern of illegal activity involving more than $100,000 in a 12-month period. Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions (Criminal Cases) 2.106 (2024); 31 U.S.C. § 5324(d)(2). That finding turns a five-year offense into a ten-year offense. It is not an element of the base crime.

Suarez also supplies the floor. Count 4 alleged two $5,000 cash withdrawals on the same day. Together they were $10,000. The CTR obligation is more than $10,000. “Even taking the government’s allegations as true, Suarez’s charged conduct does not present a structuring offense because it does not allege transactions involving more than $10,000.” Suarez, 966 F.3d at 383. Split a sum that would never have been reported, and there is nothing to evade. The conviction on that count still stood. Trial evidence of a same-day $1,100 transaction put the total over the line, and the indictment defect was harmless. Id. at 383–84.

That floor is not a same-day, same-bank ceiling. The Fifth Circuit’s instruction tells the jury: “Illegal structuring can exist even if no transaction exceeded $10,000 at any single financial institution on any single day.” Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions (Criminal Cases) 2.106, at 508 (2024). A series of $9,000 deposits across a week, made to keep the bank from filing, is the ordinary case.

What Ratzlaf  No Longer Does

Counsel still walk into these cases with Ratzlaf in mind. In 1994, the Supreme Court held that “the Government must prove that the defendant acted with knowledge that his conduct was unlawful.” Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135, 137 (1994). The word doing that work was “willfully,” then sitting in § 5322(a). Section 5324 no longer uses it.

Congress answered the same year. Pub. L. No. 103-325, § 411(a). It gave § 5324 its own penalty subsection and pulled § 5324 out of § 5322. The current text of § 5322(a) says so. Willful violations of the subchapter are punished there except as to section 5315, 5324, or 5336. A Ratzlaf instruction and the current Code cannot be given together.

The pattern instruction used in this Circuit is the one a Dallas jury will hear. “The government need not prove that a defendant knew that structuring a transaction to avoid triggering the filing requirements was itself illegal.” Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions (Criminal Cases) 2.106, at 508–09 (2024).

A defense built on knowledge that structuring is a crime is a Ratzlaf-era defense. It does not apply to conduct after September 23, 1994.

Map the Deposits

Read the total, the days, the institutions, and the purpose. The denomination on any one slip does not decide the count.

Keep running $9,000 deposits on the theory that $9,000 does not get reported, and the case the government tries is an elements case. Purpose is what it has to prove. The size of the slip is not.