Aha, so would you have (a) tipped her off to the issue in potential contravention of AML regs? Or (b) continued to serve her, despite you not being sure she is who she says she is, in potential violation of KYC/privacy?

The problem is “otherwise fine” is not a determination bank staff can make. The passport has one glaring issue, but the branch staff aren’t document experts and can’t run identification confirmation checks on government databases. The police can.

“Just a letter difference” in an official ID is reason enough, I think, to those suspicions. It’s not the job of the bank to figure out whether an ID is valid, it is however, their job to report any suspicious transactions under AML laws and to prevent fraudsters with fake IDs from accessing their bona fide customers’ accounts.

Calling the police is an entirely appropriate response in this case. Aside from taking a while to show up, it’s also not clear the police did anything wrong with the customer.

I’m sure they always call the police…

We’re dealing with a sample size of one.

Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. We have a sample size of one and you’re now