<prompt> Human: Hello PF!My mother works for a small company that engages in pretty questionable practices. They will give incentives for customers to use cash on their purchases, which they then hide from the IRS. The companys owners have accumulated quite a hefty bit of side profit from this. They actually actively look to increase their work costs by writing checks in exchange for cash.I know all of this is of dubious legality, and theyve actually already been busted once and fined a huge sum. The funny thing is that they actually make a ton of legit income too so even with the fine they are still very rich and continue doing exactly what they were before. I havent really cared since they arent really hurting anyone but themselves and theyre willing to risk the punishments from the IRS. Also, they are legit nice people and the service the provide is legit, so its not like all this dirty money is gotten through drugs or something, they just hide a portion of it from the government.However, my mother has recently been interested in buying a house. Since she is not only working for the owners but is also their close personal friend, they have offered to loan her the down payment 150k down on a 350k house interest free. As I mentioned before, they are crazy rich so this is not a huge deal for them. My mother and I are both solidly middle class to upper middle class but 150k interest free is still great for my mom.The problem is: they are giving it to my mother in their illegal cash, so she is running around asking me and her close friends to deposit the money in small 5000 lumps to avoid bank reports. Ive never cared about the business avoiding tax on cash because the owners were willing to take the risk and they werent hurting anyone else, but now I know this kind of shady banking can hurt me andor my mom. The issue with my mom is, she doesnt really understand that this is a bad thing. Am I overreacting? She feels that its not a big deal and we wouldnt get caught, and even if we did wed just pay a fine and move on. I dont know enough about the laws involved to give an argument more cogent than its bad so can anyone here help me out?TLDR: mom wants to deposit large cash sum in small chunks to avoid banks reporting deposit. Cash is also dirty as in no tax was paid for it. How can i make a good argument to get through to her that this is a bad idea?Assistant: Incidentally, making smaller deposits like this to avoid reporting requirements is called structuring, and is also illegal. Human: I know that it is illegal, that was my main argument against her. Thank you.  <response>: Tell her also someone correct me if Im wrong that if they catch her structuring, which is likely, shell possibly forfeit the money and still owe it back to the employer. Making that, in my extremely uneducated opinion, this thing she is doing is very likely to cost her 150k.This is just all kinds of stupid - if she cant come up with a legitimate source which only her bosses can do, really she just plain cant accept the loan for the down payment. 