Suspicious activity reports and suspicious transaction reports pass your findings to the authorities. The reader has never seen the case, so the report must stand alone. Write it as a timeline: who did what, when, through which accounts, and why it looked suspicious. Leave out adjectives and conclusions the evidence does not support.
What a strong filing contains
- Full identifiers for each person and account involved, exactly as they appear in the records.
- A dated sequence of the relevant transactions, with amounts and channels, in chronological order.
- The red flags observed, stated as facts, such as structuring or activity inconsistent with the profile.
- What checks were done and what they showed, including checks that came back clean.
End with the current status: whether the account remains open, what monitoring continues, and whether law enforcement has already been in contact. A filing that answers the next reader's questions is a filing done well.