In 1970, U.S. Congress established currency transaction reporting requirements via the BSA. However, though government agencies found the reports to be extremely useful in criminal, tax and regulatory investigations, it soon became apparent that the sheer volume of such reports was becoming overwhelming. Therefore, in 1986, Congress passed the Money Laundering Control Act (MLCA), which did two things: firstly, it made it easier to report this information (previously, tellers had to contact an agent directly, the Act allowed tellers to merely fill in a form and submit it to the agency); and secondly, it gave legal immunity to financial institutions that did report such transactions. The MLCA also made mandatory exceptions to certain reports that had little use to U.S. law enforcement agencies. In 2001, however, Congress found that some financial institutions were not utilizing the exemption system and, once again, the volume of reports was interfering with law enforcement. In fact, the number of Currency transaction reports (CTRs) filed on in the 2002 financial year was 12.3 million. Though this represented a decrease from the 13 million filed in the 2000 financial year, only 118,678 exemptions were made: a tiny fraction of the total amount of CTRs filed.