I just received this letter from my life insurance company, whom I recently started to pay using online banking from a joint checking account:
We received a payment… from a payor other than the listed policy owner… the check received has been identified as a third party check. In accordance with Company Anti-Money Laundering Procedures and the USA PATRIOT Act, all payments received must be drawn on the policy owner’s account.
In order to accept future payments from the below listed payor [my husband] the following supporting/additional documentation is required…
The additional documentation is a form that asks for all of my husband’s identifying information and his relationship to me. My husband has policies with this insurance company and we’ve been paying premiums using EFT’s and checks from this same exact account for years, so they already have all of this information. But apparently not on a form that will protect them from the feds now that only his name appeared as the payor using the online banking “feature.” Will the insurance company now automatically be required to share this information to stay compliant with our snooping betters in DC? Have I already been flagged at the FBI/CIA as a potential money-laundering terrorist?
Perhaps someone, somewhere gave some good reason to a group of congressmen and senators for the necessity of such a provision in the PATRIOT Act, assuming that any of them are even aware of this provision. But, did they ever think about what a wide net this provision is casting? If everyone is a suspected money-launderer for terrorists, then how can an actual threat in the haystack of strawmen be found? Oh. Right. This is not about catching the bad guys; it’s about controlling the (innocent) masses.
10:47 pm on May 15, 2012
