A customer makes multiple cash deposits of $9,500 each over several days to avoid the $10,000 Currency Transaction Report (CTR) threshold. This practice is known as:

Why A — Structuring

Structuring (also called 'smurfing') is the illegal practice of breaking up transactions into smaller amounts specifically to avoid triggering the $10,000 CTR filing threshold. Structuring is a federal crime even if the underlying funds are legitimate. In the money laundering cycle, placement (D) is introducing illicit funds into the financial system, layering (A) is moving funds through multiple transactions to obscure their origin, and integration (C) is reintroducing 'clean' money into the economy.