Structuring & Currency Transaction Violations Defense: 31 U.S.C. § 5324

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

Structuring is one of the few federal crimes that can be committed entirely with a person’s own, lawfully earned money — and that surprises almost everyone charged with it. If federal agents are asking about your cash deposits, bring a structuring lawyer into the conversation before you offer anyone an explanation, because everything in these cases rides on a single, narrow question of intent. At Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C., we defend individuals and businesses against federal structuring allegations nationwide.

Structuring is codified at 31 U.S.C. § 5324. It criminalizes breaking up cash transactions to keep a bank from filing a currency report — and it is frequently charged on its own, even where there is no underlying crime at all. Structuring counts also travel alongside the offenses we describe in our money laundering defense overview, and prosecutors often pair them with Bank Secrecy Act theories built on the same transactions.

Our firm brings a federal-court defense practice grounded in detailed statutory analysis and controlling case law. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, our principal attorney, was named a 2026 Best Lawyers in America “Best Lawyer” in Appellate Practice and holds a Chambers USA 2026 ranking for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations. In each structuring matter our starting question is the same one a jury will face: can the government prove a purpose to evade reporting, or only a deposit pattern with an innocent explanation? If a structuring investigation has reached your accounts or your doorstep, a paid, one-hour initial consultation is the right place to start.

Structuring: Quick Answer

Question	Answer
What is structuring?	Breaking up cash transactions into smaller amounts to keep a financial institution from filing a Currency Transaction Report — a crime under 31 U.S.C. § 5324.
What must the government prove?	That the defendant knew of the reporting requirement and structured transactions for the purpose of evading it.
What penalties can apply?	Up to 5 years in federal prison — up to 10 years where the structuring is part of a pattern of illegal activity or another violation.
Is structuring a crime even with legal money?	Yes. Structuring can be charged even where the cash was lawfully earned — the offense is the intent to evade reporting, not the source of the funds.
Where do I start if I am under investigation?	With counsel, before any interview. Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. takes structuring and seizure matters nationwide through a paid, one-hour initial consultation.

Key Takeaways

• Structuring, under 31 U.S.C. § 5324, is breaking up cash transactions to evade currency-transaction reporting.
• Banks must file a Currency Transaction Report for cash transactions over $10,000; structuring is conduct designed to keep that report from being filed.
• Structuring can be charged even where the cash was entirely legitimate — the source of the money is not the issue.
• The government must prove the defendant knew of the reporting requirement and acted with the purpose of evading it.
• The government no longer has to prove the defendant knew structuring itself was illegal — only the intent to evade reporting.
• Structuring carries up to 5 years, or up to 10 where it is part of a pattern of illegal activity or another violation.
• Civil and criminal forfeiture of the structured funds is a major feature of these cases.
• Since the Taxpayer First Act of 2019, the IRS may seize funds for claimed structuring only where the money came from an illegal source or was structured to conceal another crime — and owners can demand a court hearing within 30 days.
• The intent-to-evade element is the central defense.

What Is Structuring?

To understand structuring, start with the reporting rule it is built around. Federal law requires financial institutions to file a Currency Transaction Report — a CTR — whenever a customer conducts a cash transaction of more than $10,000. The CTR is an automatic, routine report; it is not an accusation, and a person who simply deposits $15,000 in cash has done nothing wrong.

Structuring is the crime of deliberately arranging cash transactions to keep that report from being filed. It is codified at 31 U.S.C. § 5324, which provides that no person shall, for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements, structure or assist in structuring — or attempt to structure — any transaction with one or more financial institutions.

In practice, structuring usually looks like a pattern of cash deposits or withdrawals kept just under $10,000 — several $9,000 deposits, deposits split across days or branches, or cash broken up across accounts. The defining feature is not the dollar amounts themselves; it is the purpose. Conduct is structuring only if it was done for the purpose of evading the reporting requirement.

What Counts as Structuring Beyond Bank Deposits

Most people picture cash structuring as a bank-counter offense, but § 5324 has three distinct prongs, and each one carries the same penalties. Subsection (a) is the familiar one: transactions with banks and credit unions arranged to defeat the Currency Transaction Report requirement of 31 U.S.C. § 5313(a), which obligates financial institutions to report currency transactions above $10,000 to FinCEN.

Subsection (b) reaches cash commerce outside banking entirely. A trade or business that receives more than $10,000 in cash must report the payment on Form 8300 under 31 U.S.C. § 5331 — so splitting a vehicle purchase, a tuition bill, or an inventory payment into smaller cash installments to keep the seller from filing can be prosecuted as structuring even though no bank was involved. Subsection (c) covers the international side: breaking up currency or monetary instruments moved across the border to defeat the § 5316 reporting requirement, conduct that shades into the separate offense of bulk cash smuggling.

One caution runs through all of this: the knowledge element is requirement-specific, and the government’s proof must match the duty charged. In United States v. O’Steen, 133 F.4th 1200 (11th Cir. 2025), the Eleventh Circuit threw out an attorney’s conviction for willfully failing to file a Form 8300 because the government never proved he actually knew the requirement’s terms — being a lawyer with a general sense that cash reports exist was not enough. The same logic helps the defense in structuring cases: familiarity with bank CTRs does not establish knowledge of the separate reporting duties that apply to a trade or business.

Every prong also punishes attempts and “assisting in” structuring. A person who never touches the money — an adviser, a bookkeeper, a family member who suggests keeping deposits small — can be charged on an assistance theory. Across all three prongs, the unifying element remains the purpose of evading a report, which is why the analysis on this page applies to each of them.

Structuring With Legitimate Money

The feature of structuring that surprises almost everyone is this: the cash does not have to be dirty. Structuring can be charged even where every dollar was lawfully earned — a cash-intensive business’s daily receipts, a person’s savings, the proceeds of a legitimate sale. The offense is not about the source of the money. It is about the intent to keep the bank from filing a report.

This is why structuring charges so often fall on ordinary people and small-business owners — restaurant and convenience-store operators, farmers, contractors, and others who handle cash — rather than on career criminals. Many simply did not understand the reporting system, or kept deposits small for reasons that had nothing to do with the law: fear of robbery, a habit, advice from a teller, a desire not to draw attention, or a misunderstanding picked up from others.

The use of structuring laws against people whose money was entirely legitimate drew significant public criticism, and enforcement policy has shifted over time to focus on cases where the funds are connected to other crime. But the statute itself still reaches structuring of legitimate cash, and the defense must take that seriously.

Applied Insight: In a structuring case built on legitimate cash, the entire defense is the purpose element. People keep deposits small for many innocent reasons. Documenting those reasons — the business practice, the safety concern, the teller’s offhand advice, the genuine unawareness of the $10,000 rule — directly answers the government’s claim of an intent to evade.

The Intent Requirement

Because structuring can involve legitimate money, the intent element does all the work, and it is worth understanding precisely how it has evolved.

In Ratzlaf v. United States, 510 U.S. 135 (1994), the Supreme Court held that the “willfulness” language then governing structuring prosecutions required proof that the defendant knew structuring itself was unlawful. Congress answered within the year: the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994 gave § 5324 its own criminal penalty provision and stripped willfulness out of the offense. For conduct after September 23, 1994, the government does not have to prove the defendant knew structuring was a crime.

What the government must still prove is significant: that the defendant knew of the currency reporting requirement and structured the transactions for the purpose of evading it. A person who did not know banks file reports on large cash transactions cannot have structured to evade that requirement. And a person who knew of the requirement but kept deposits small for reasons unrelated to it — not for the purpose of evasion — has not committed structuring. The intent to evade reporting is the line, and it is the defense.

The courts of appeals have distilled the modern offense into three elements. In United States v. MacPherson, 424 F.3d 183 (2d Cir. 2005), the Second Circuit required proof that the defendant actually engaged in acts of structuring, knew that financial institutions must report currency transactions over $10,000, and acted with the intent to evade that reporting — and it held that a pattern of sub-threshold transactions may, by itself, allow a jury to infer both knowledge and intent. That last point is the practical danger in these cases: the deposit records alone can become the government’s mental-state evidence, and motive is not something prosecutors must prove. The innocent explanation for the pattern has to be developed early, supported by documents, and presented before the pattern is allowed to speak for itself.

Penalties and Forfeiture

Criminal structuring under § 5324 carries a statutory maximum of up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine. The maximum rises to up to 10 years where the structuring is committed while violating another law of the United States, or as part of a pattern of any illegal activity involving more than $100,000 in a twelve-month period.

For many people, however, the most painful part of a structuring case is forfeiture. The government can pursue civil or criminal forfeiture of the funds involved in the structuring, and because the structured money is itself the “property involved” in the offense, the government’s theory often reaches the entire amount — even when the cash was lawfully earned. Early, focused work to contest forfeiture and to protect legitimate funds is frequently a priority from the outset.

At sentencing, structuring convictions are scored under U.S.S.G. § 2S1.3, and the mechanics matter to the defense. The guideline starts at level 6 and adds offense levels from the § 2B1.1 fraud table based on the value of the funds — the full amount run through the transactions, whatever its source. Two levels are added if the defendant knew or believed the funds were proceeds of unlawful activity, and two more can apply where the structuring accompanied another federal violation or a pattern of unlawful activity exceeding $100,000 in a year. Just as important is the guideline’s safe harbor: where the funds came from lawful activity, were intended for a lawful purpose, and the defendant did not act with reckless disregard of their source, § 2S1.3(b)(3) drops the offense level back to 6 — a reduction that can move a legitimate-money case from a prison-range calculation to one where probation is on the table. Litigating the value of the funds and the safe harbor is often where a structuring sentencing is won.

Applied Insight: In structuring matters, the forfeiture fight and the criminal-charge fight are intertwined and both deserve early attention. For a small-business owner whose working capital has been seized, recovering the money can matter as much as avoiding a conviction — and a well-built defense pursues both at once.

How Structuring Enforcement Has Changed (2014–2026)

For years, the most criticized feature of structuring enforcement was the civil forfeiture of legal-source money — bank accounts of farmers, restaurateurs, and shop owners seized on deposit patterns alone. That criticism produced real reform. In late 2014, the IRS announced it would no longer pursue seizure and forfeiture in legal-source structuring cases absent exceptional circumstances, and in March 2015 the Department of Justice issued a policy directive restricting structuring seizures: absent criminal charges, prosecutors generally need probable cause of additional federal criminal activity before seizing accounts, must return funds where the admissible evidence cannot carry a trial, and face a 150-day deadline to file a criminal indictment or civil complaint against seized money.

Congress then wrote the core protection into statute. Section 1201 of the Taxpayer First Act of 2019 amended 31 U.S.C. § 5317(c)(2) so that the IRS may seize property for a claimed § 5324 violation only where the property was derived from an illegal source or the funds were structured to conceal some other violation of criminal law. The same provision gives owners teeth: a person whose property is seized may demand a court hearing within 30 days, and the property must be returned unless the court finds probable cause both that structuring occurred and that the illegal-source or concealment condition is met.

What has not changed is the crime itself. Section 5324 still reaches lawfully earned money, criminal prosecutions still follow Suspicious Activity Report referrals, criminal forfeiture remains available after conviction, and the statutory limits on IRS seizures do not bind every investigating agency in the same way. The reforms give the defense powerful leverage in legal-source cases — but they are tools to be used, not a reason to assume the case will resolve itself.

Defenses to Structuring Charges

No two structuring cases are alike, and no lawyer can promise a result. But several defense themes recur, and matching them to the evidence is the core of building a strategy:

• No intent to evade reporting. The defendant did not act for the purpose of preventing a currency report — the central element of the offense.
• No knowledge of the reporting requirement. The defendant did not know banks file reports on large cash transactions and so could not have structured to evade them.
• Innocent reasons for the pattern. The deposits were kept small for legitimate reasons — business practice, safety, habit, or a teller’s advice — not to evade reporting.
• Legitimate source of funds. The cash was lawfully earned, which supports an innocent explanation and is central to the forfeiture defense.
• No pattern. The transactions do not form the kind of pattern the government’s theory requires.
• Forfeiture challenges. The seizure of legitimate funds can be contested, and the proportionality of any forfeiture can be challenged.
• Sentencing challenges. Even where conviction is likely, contesting the amount and the enhancements can substantially reduce exposure.

The right combination depends entirely on the facts. Our role is to test the government’s proof element by element, develop the favorable record, and press every legitimate defense — during the investigation, in pretrial motions, at trial, and on appeal.

How Structuring Investigations Begin

Structuring investigations almost always begin with the bank. Financial institutions monitor for patterns of sub-$10,000 cash transactions and file Suspicious Activity Reports — a duty that flows from the same Bank Secrecy Act framework that creates the CTR itself — when they see them. That reporting feeds federal investigations, and the first sign of a structuring case is often a seizure of bank funds or a visit from federal agents.

The early steps matter. Preserve all records, including anything that documents why cash was handled as it was, and decline to give an unprepared interview — because structuring turns entirely on purpose, an off-the-cuff explanation of “why I kept the deposits small” can be used against you. Consult an experienced structuring lawyer before saying anything substantive or signing anything related to the seized funds.

Why Work With Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Structuring cases reward defense lawyers who understand that the entire case is the purpose element, who can build out the innocent explanations for a cash-handling pattern, and who can fight the forfeiture of legitimate funds with the same energy as the criminal charge.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best — admitted to the United States Supreme Court and all twelve federal circuit courts of appeals, and the author of Reversing Your Criminal Conviction — leads the defense in every matter our firm accepts. Over her career she has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, including over 100 federal appeals, and her 2026 honors include a Best Lawyers in America listing in Appellate Practice and a Chambers USA ranking for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations — the kind of record that matters when a structuring case has to be preserved for appeal or its forfeiture pressed on review. Christopher Zoukis, our Managing Director, brings detailed knowledge of federal sentencing and Bureau of Prisons practice to the strategy work behind each case. Because we appear pro hac vice in district courts around the country alongside our standing admissions, where your structuring case is pending does not limit who defends it.

No one can guarantee how a structuring case ends, and we will not pretend otherwise. What you can count on is the work itself: every deposit record read, every element of § 5324 pressure-tested, every statutory route to your seized funds pursued, and straight answers about where the case stands at each step. To put that level of scrutiny on your side of the table, schedule a paid, one-hour initial consultation.

Talk With a Structuring Defense Lawyer

Few federal charges put your freedom and your bank balance in jeopardy at the same time the way a structuring case does — and few turn so completely on a story the deposit records cannot tell on their own. Getting a structuring defense lawyer involved early preserves the explanations, the witnesses, and the seized funds that grow harder to recover with every passing month. To walk through your circumstances in confidence, book your paid, one-hour initial consultation with our team today.