Money laundering is a vague term used to justify intrusive government overreach. If you have $16,000 in cash and deposit $9,000 in your bank account one day and $7,000 the next, you are a criminal guilty of structuring.
Here's the fact pattern that _would_ make you a criminal guilty of structuring:
"You have $16,000 in cash. Knowing that there are reporting events that trigger some additional scrutiny of transactions about $10,000 you deliberately break the deposit into two separate transactions with the purpose of avoiding that scrutiny. As such, you deposit $9,000 in your bank account one day and $7,000 the next".
That's structuring. It requires the intent of avoiding the scrutiny. If you broke your deposits into two transactions for any other reason, it is not against the law.
The definition of structuring is 31 USC § 5324.
> No person shall, for the purpose of evading the reporting requirements of section 5313(a) or 5325 or any regulation prescribed under any such section, the reporting or recordkeeping requirements imposed by any order issued under section 5326, or the recordkeeping requirements imposed by any regulation prescribed under section 21 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act or section 123 of Public Law 91–508
If you want to cry about the lack of due process in civil forfeiture, I will be with you 100%.
Your complaint was about _criminal_ structuring, which puts a significant burden of proof on the prosecutor and not on the defendant
Even given all of this, the Kwon case has more to do with the tax court than it does the Federal criminal courts.
I do believe that money laundering laws as currently written are often abused, however I don't think the Kwon case demonstrates what you assert.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-irs-seized-59000-fr...
> If you want to cry about the lack of due process in civil forfeiture, I will be with you 100
Edit: stike that, I didn't see the guilty plea to structuring. This was a criminal case.
Edit: I will note the fact pattern in the WaPo article _is_ much closer to the one I described above. Kwon was breaking his transactions into smaller deposits to avoid paperwork (which is distinct from scrutiny, but not massively distinct).
The burden of proof argument is also not reached in this case. I doubt the prosecution would have been able to prove that Kwon was actually structuring (given that it seems likely he could establish the distinction of avoiding _paperwork_ and avoiding _scrutiny_ to a jury). Still, this case has no bearing on burden of proof, as it was resolved by a guilty plea.
I agree that this case shows a fairly clear failure of prosecutorial discretion. I don't think it has any relevance towards a burden of proof debate about intent.
Lastly, that was some _really_ bad advice provided by the bank teller. Like...very very bad.
But yes, I was specifically calling out the guy who pled guilty...maybe he just had a bad lawyer, but I would have to assume that he pled guilty because of the fear of god the DA was putting in him regarding this 'structuring'
I think this case shows more problems with prosecutorial discretion, and the absolute reliance on plea deals in the system—that insanely incentive people to accept plea deals even when innocent.
Don't get me wrong, I think our criminal justice system is broken in a lot of ways. I also think there are lots of overly broad statutes that criminalize normal behavior and leave people exposed to selective prosecution.
All that said, I don't think this particular statute is that problematic.
There are plenty of cases near and dear to HN’s heart where the consensus is DOJ did wrong things. I don’t understand how we can simultaneously act like it’s safe to rely on the prosecution’s need to prove intent.
Literally every law that includes intent as a component—which I would argue should be almost all of them—rely on the prosecution's need to prove intent.
The fact that the criminal justice system is broken doesn't mean this statute is broken. If we're going to throw out this statute because it depends on the prosecutor's ability to prove intent, I guess that means we need to throw out all of the criminal statutes.
Totally agree about prosecutorial fuckery (though, I wouldn't contain it to just the DOJ, plenty of state level prosecutorial fuckery). I just don't see how that shows that money laundering or structuring statutes themselves are the problem.
I think your problem is more with the criminal justice system (which I agree is broken in systematic ways) than with these particular laws. These complaints could be directed at the abuse of any number of reasonable laws on the books.
If you do it all the time, you'd want to have a pretty solid explanation for why.
But yeah, sorta: if you are repeatedly splitting such deposits in exactly the way needed to avoid reporting and scrutiny, and don't have a valid non-structuring explanation, those facts are going to go a long way toward proving intent in the minds of a jury. Would you seriously argue otherwise?
It's a reason shared by everyone. It's even true for drug dealers laundering their drug money. If that's a valid reason then who could be charged under this law?
That's the problem with the laws against money laundering. They prohibit things that are perfectly innocuous and done by honest people for legitimate reasons. They give prosecutors something to charge anyone they don't like with, even though thousands of other businesses are doing exactly the same thing without being charged because the prosecutors don't care about them.
It's nothing but an excuse to charge someone with something when you can't prove the thing they're actually supposed to be guilty of.
This is exactly it.
If you want to stop a drug dealer, then prove they are dealing drugs, and put them in prison for that.
But it's too hard to prove they're dealing drugs, so create a law that criminalizes something that could potentially help a drug dealer cover his/her tracks, like concealing large transfers from the government. Now all of a sudden a new category of crime has been created that affects far more than drug dealers.
Anti-money-laundering laws are a blunt instrument for fighting crime that restricts the rights of millions of innocent people, in the name of stopping a small population of criminals.
This is because—as in all criminal cases—we presume innocence and put the burden of proof on the prosecutor.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/24/...
The money laundering charges were used as leverage to get Gates to turn, which makes one wonder if the government should be allowed such a powerful tool that can be misused against the innocent. Shouldn’t the prosecution be focused on proving their real crimes and not a victimless reporting statute?
> “Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work. From approximately 2006 through the present, Manafort and Gates engaged in a scheme to hide income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money,” the indictment charges.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/speci...