Jim Yanik wrote:

Some Federal bureaucrat examines your reported financial tranactions
to see if there's a pattern that criminals or terrorists use,or
connections to criminal/terrorist orgs. Perhaps a computer program
first filters it,before a human takes a look. I doubt they reveal
exactly what criteria they use,so the bad guys don't adapt.

ATF does the same with multiple firearms buys.
that's how they find FFLs/straw purchasers who are supplying guns to
criminals.

Um, sort of. The Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder must report sales of
more than five pistols to the same person in one week to the BATF. There is
currently no reporting threshold on long guns. There is NO reporting of any
gun sale (of less than five pistols) to BATF or anyone else. (Your state may
be assholes about this and require reporting. Mine doesn't.)

Even with pistols, one could buy four pistols at ten different FFL
dealerships in one day and such purchases would not trip any alarms. The FFL
dealer does NOT inform the BATF or anybody else about such purchases - or,
in fact, any normal gun purchase.

Sure, the FBI must be contacted* to approve each sale, but even when there
are forty sales to the same person in the same day, the FBI (even if it
tracked such a thing) cannot, by law, report these multiple NICS inquiries
to the BATF (or anybody else) and the record of the NICS inquiry must be
destroyed within 24 hours.

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* The FBI is usually contacted, through the National Inta-Check System, but
there are exceptions. In my state and many others the holder of a concealed
handgun permit is presumed to be righteous and the NICS authorization is not
done.