Money Laundering is defined as "the investment or transfer of currency from an alleged illegal activity or unlawful purpose into legitimate channels, so that its original source cannot be traced". Prohibitions against money laundering are codified in the following statues:

I. Title 18 U.S.C. § 1956 Laundering of Monetary Instruments.
This statute makes it illegal to:

A. To conduct or attempt to conduct a financial transaction if you know that the proceeds used in the transaction were from a Specified Unlawful
Activity (SUA).

B. To take part in a transaction that is designed to conceal or disguise in any manner the proceeds of a SUA.

C. To transport, transmit, transfer (or attempt to) money into or out of the United States with the intent to promote a SUA or knowing that the money represent the proceeds of a SUA.

D. To avoid a transaction reporting requirement or to conduct a financial transaction involving property that law enforcement represents to be the proceeds of a SUA.

The list of specified unlawful activities is very lengthy and is being added to on a frequent basis. The other part of this violation is that any assets used in this alleged money laundering activity are forfeitable (see Asset Forfeitures).


II. Title 18 U.S.C.A § 1957

Which makes it unlawful to take part in or attempt to take part in monetary transactions involving criminally derived property with a value of greater than $10,000 and which comes from a SUA.
This is a catch all law, which includes all other activities not found in
18 U.S.C. § 1956.

III. Title 31 U.S.C. § 5324

This section of law makes it illegal to structure a single amount of currency over $10,000 into increments of less than $10,000 or in multiple transactions for the purpose of avoiding the Bank Reporting Requirement: i.e. Currency Transaction Reports ( CTR¹s ). An example of multiple transactions is such as depositing money in:

A. Several times in the same bank branch on the same day.
B. Different branches on the same bank.
C. Different banks on the same day.
D. The same bank on different days.
E. Different banks on different days.

All of which was designed to break up the $10,000 or more amounts into increments which would not require the filing of a Currency Transaction Report.

More importantly this statute does not require that the money come from a SUA. It also does not require that the person had knowledge that to do this would be an illegal activity.

The above monetary statutes are being used on a more and more frequent basis by Federal investigative agencies and (or) state or local investigative agencies wanting to use Federal statutes. The advantage of these statutes is that it shows the dollar amount being used in the SUA. These statutes (with the exception of Title 31 § 5324) require that law enforcement also prove the underlining SUA. These statutes are complicated and require a good deal of work on the part of law enforcement to successfully prove and prosecute. A knowledgeable defense can sometimes be utilized to defeat the action of the law enforcement agency investigating the alleged crime.