the morning the may have pleased the court's assistant attorney general michael blank in time on behalf of the people the appellate court in this case reversed the defendant's conviction for money laundering after determining that the undefined statutory term proceeds refers only to the net profits generated by criminal act the court further determined that despite failing to raise an objection to this issue in the trial court defendant was entitled to relief under the plain air rule both of these determinations were erroneous and this court should reverse the appellate court's judgment for either of t independent reasons first although undefined by the money laundering statute proceeds ordinarily means the gross receipts generated by a criminal act that's the meaning of the term the primary dictionary definition of that term the only definition provided by black's law dictionary and the meaning that term has been given in substantively related provisions of illinois law second if this court disagrees defendant was not entitled to relief under the plan air rule because she failed to demonstrate at the trial cour reliance on the gross receipts evidence to prove the money laundering charge was a clear obvious error indeed the defendant's argument depends on a finding of ambiguity regarding the meaning of proceeds and if the term is in big us the tr reliance on one of those reasonable means to not have been clearly or obviously wrong turning to the primary issue in this case the that the interpretation of the statutory term proceeds this court should hold that that refers not only to the net profits generated by a criminal act but also to the gross receipts or the total amount generated by that crime the general usage dictionaries lead with the gross receipts definition for proceeds black's law dictionary provides only one definition and as we've explained in our brief the general somebody has demonstrated that when it legislates in areas that are similar to the money laundering statute it consistently gives that term its gross receipts meaning united states versus and those if you different definition that the that's that's correct the  money laundering statute and one justice concern in the judgment concluding essentially that the meaning of the term proceeds varies depending on the facts of a given case but about the and that is that the chief history of the that i believe that's that's correct that the statute is modeled after the federal federal statute law just misinterpreted here i'm sorry but it was just misinterpreted here the statute was mis interpreted by the appellate court and there's no need to get to the to the legislative history statutes tends to negate any contention that proceeds as it is ambiguous by the time the money laundering statute was passed there were six criminal statutes dealing with forfeiture provisions and find where the general simply has used the terms profits and proceeds side by side now in those statutes proceeds must be given its rest receipts mean otherwise the term profits in those statutes would be truly superfluous and it's appropriate to consider those statutes because of the substantive relationship that they share with the money laundering statute the money laundering statute is about eliminating the value that the fruits of criminal activity have and it does it in two ways by by penalize in financial transactions that take criminally generated property and used use that use those proceeds to carry on further criminal activity it also penalizes transactions of ads are designed to to remove proceeds from the business and conceal the fact that they are criminally generated thereby enabling criminals to use those funds for their own personal benefit the forfeiture step statutes work toward a similar objective by by reducing the financial incentive to engage in crime in the first place by providing that a deaf and convicted defendant will forfeit any profits or proceeds generated by his from will act the general sum is taken away the financial incentive to to participate in the that on illegal activity and similarly in the the drug fined statutes the general somebody has turned a criminal's assets into liabilities those statutes provide that a fine imposed on a defendant should be set with regard to the amount of profits or proceeds generated by the underlying crime so the more crime you can gauge and the more profits and proceeds you generate the greater your finest going to be in so given the the  criminal statutes that were in effect at the time the money laundering statute was passed and the seven that were passed subsequently all of which use the terms profits and proceeds side by side this court can find at the general somebody understands the word proceeds not to cover only net profits but also the gross receipts or the the total amount generated by the underlying crime and because several of those statutes were enacted before the money laundering statute it's fair to it's it's a receipts in the second consideration for given proceeds its gross receipts meanings are considering the consequences of adopting the net profits interpretation that the defendant is is advocating for in this case and that  adopted we know from the text of the money laundering statute that the general somebody was concerned with financial transactions that promote the carrying on of illegal activity and financial transactions that are designed to conceal conceal the fact that the property at issue in the transactions is in fact criminally generated and both of those objectives are furthered by affording proceeds it's its ordinary gross receipts meaning the proceeds of a crime even if they don't represent profits are useful to criminals they can be used to pay the expenses of the business they can be used to sue they can be leveraged into further criminal activity and they can be removed from the business and enjoyed by the criminal for his his own personal benefit or in a related consideration is the difficulties in proving what constitutes a profit or a net profit with regard to a criminal enterprise the terms  profits and net income only makes sense when or after the application of general accounting rules but as as the dissenting justices in santo's persuasively demonstrated criminal organizations don't ordinarily keep records of their  of their criminal businesses and indeed record adopting the net profits approach which requires which requires proof of its business expenses and not profits provides an incentive if this court disagrees the appellate court's judgment should still be reversed because of that court because that court misapplied the plain air rule of threshold requirement after or if this court were to find that proceeds means not profits then it's then it's clear that an error occurred in this case but the defendant has has failed to meet her burden at the second step of the plan air rule which is to show that the trial court's reliance on the gross receipts evidence was clearly are obviously wrong  of lenity but if proces is ambiguous and is susceptible of two reasonable interpretations the trial court could not have committed a clear obvious error in applying one of those interpretations and if the court has no questions at this time i'll save the remainder of my comments for a bottle thank you thank you been in this case alleged that gutman knowingly engaged in a series of financial transactions in criminal leader derived property consisting of proceeds of pain from the decided by united states versus santos and unlike what the state would like to argue not only the plurality but the the supreme court has decided that n proceedings is the right definition for the word proceedings and then when you look at illinois but let's look at it a little bit though didn't justice stevens agreed with the dissent was right in most cases and only voted with the majority to avoid what he called a perverse result in a particular case before the court and in other in other words isn't it really true that five members of the u s supreme court to agree that proces generally means gro receipts as the cord indicates the supreme court indicates it is addictive by judge stevens and therefore it should be looked at councils are still free to argue in other cases where the issues are different than whether what is the definition of proceedings means what is what are we to make of the event anything that congress and  mediately after this decision was written amended the statute to assign a gross receipts definition gross well i think what you are to make of that fact is that illinois this is is in agreement with the prior act of congress of the united states congress and not with the current act of congress because the united states with the illinois general assembly has amended this statute in two thousand and five in fact overhauled the entire statute in two thousand and five and still remained unclear with the or proceeds they had an opportunity from their prior enactment or forfeiture to add these to let it towards profits or we have a case where it appears that if we accept stephen's words then in most cases gross receipts should be used as the definition and he says th and then shortly thereafter the opinions of me get five justices and that issue then congress u s congress decides to to make the definition of gross receipts and you say then as a result the illinois legislature is left with a choice do you want the first american to congress or the second so my question then becomes are we to believe that our legislature then is perfectly fine with money decided that and decided to leave it at proceeds to mean that receipts in situations like we have here because they had they enacted statutes after the fact after the supreme court i believe has changed the statute and still remain intact with this definition or non definition of the word proceeds just because i believe that there are other statute and for example the the fourth amendment in illinois that are construed differently even though they started similar how to explain this to me how as a professional money i wonder and i believe this was a very good phrase by the straight to know if a profit was turned in the underlying criminal transaction i think just like in the in the supreme court case of scientists you can show that and it's not a very difficult process to show or element to show by the state and that goes to the burden of proof your honor if it is it goes to showing they can show by circumstantial evidence that this professional money laundering has been doing it over time he knows whether or not he or she knows whether or not they let's say it's it's a carwash operation and you would agree though that it would make it difficult to prove i would agree it will make it more difficult to prove but this it and that's and that's what the legislature here mine our legislature here in mind to make it more difficult to to prove prove us against money one well they may not have it more difficult but they also certainly did not intend to enact a statute that is that has the same exact results or pop or more powerful results then for example the theft or the vendor fraud and our case because under the merger problem that we have any theft in a situation like ours would include money laundering ever every person such as the defendant in this case would've automatically been also guilty of money laundering and i don't think that the our legislature intended on doing something like that at all so just putting on a small or additional burden on the state is not something that  we should interpret as the legislative did not want to do it i think more importantly they didn't want to create two statutes that have the exact same results rip before we get to legislative intent no we isn't our first job to determine well i think black's law dish dictionary is not really the common law definition it's more of a legal definition of anything but we have other all other except for black law dictionary all other dictionaries and i think that this of the scientists decision makes it very clear even through the dissent just the salute going to the senses that by opening a dictionary the term proceeds is still a big us you cannot define the term proceeds  simply looking at the definition from the dictionary so i think councils argument as to  us i think if you open the dictionary it's inherently ambiguous that's correct and so and i think it's also maybe use here in illinois because the fact that congress at least  for us the use of police for different ways to define when they use the word proceeds they use the word proceeds only in this money laundering statute all of the statutes are profits or proceeds or profits or other proceeds  money or any monies profits or proceeds if congress wanted to include the whole everything they would have simply use something that they used in the past which is profits or roast it back to your point just quickly  of the underlying criminal offenses would you agree with the state's argument that in this case so whatever that none of the acts of money laundering here were also elements of theft or vendor fraud the predicate offenses for which defendant was convicted  i disagree now the question before you is what what is proceeds not what is promotion or concealment and i disagree because the operation here was was operation of a taxicab  transporting people from place a to place b and b and you petey was giving vouchers to be paid by the state of illinois that are either inflated or completely false had different mileage on them and such now they did have and the state in the in their statement of facts and in the trial they did have a lot of expenses they had thirty two or thirty three cars at least they had individuals driving these cars they had they had a place of business they had plenty of expenses to pay outs prior to in fact not only that your honour's area gotten had to lend money to the corporation and numerous times i think the judge the trial judge made it very clear in his ruling where he said that money go was going back and forth because the operation was not profitable or possibly not profit all we don't have any evidence or there was no evidence to show that and so i think that this is this is the case that is very similar to scientists because there has been a lot of expenses so other than money laundering it's not in our situation it's in our situation it is not money laundering or at least you need to show that there was some profit made because as the testimony at trial here was very specific ms gutman did put in her own money into the operation and the three th just under three million dollars that that came into the not necessarily came in and there's no evidence to show otherwise not necessarily came in from that operation alone because there was testimony the other operations such as you petey existed in the past by these two individuals lubin skin gutman and money from the state of illinois does not come or was not paid out at least four to eight months so there may have been money that was properly paid through other operation into u p c just because they change the name of the corporation and therefore it's not money laundering at all and ask you a question plain error your opponent generally this court has said that we that there is air and if if you side on the same way that the supreme court case and santos sided and decide that proceeds means that in our situation there circumstance then whether or not there needs to be an additional burden to show that it was clear on obvious air i think in this situation first of all i think that there was a showing my kids are in court here and i like i always tell them when you do your homework you've got to show the work that you have done unfortunately maybe the appellate court did not show the work that they have done to reach that decision but they did determine that there was air in a fundamental  r and the reason why they determined that there was clear error or obvious clear and obvious errors because the evidence again the evidence that was shown the trial was very now i think that the era was especially when you when you look specifically at the judge's this decision at sentencing the trial judge says that the money was growing from universal checks going through i read gottman hundreds and thousands of dollars some money coming back and forth now in order to determine whether or not or what classification and what sentence one should get for money laundering the first determination must be how much money was wonder if any i don't think that the judge based on determination here in the trial court even knew it he received numbers  received three million dollars he received one hundred seventy thousand approximately he received the number of three hundred or two hundred thousand dollars initial investment by year it got me but there was no clear indication at the trial court level by the state because it's their burden to show what was the money laundering how much money was there it would have been under the hundred thousand dollars and i put in there was no objection there wa move on to how we were viewed this let's assume we agree with you then there was a right so i think are you arguing that this kind of error is the type of area that is so serious that there must be an this term but there was a question about it back at the trial level than that is does not rise to the level plain error is that the correct analysis well i think the correct analysis to look at the word proceeds before it goes into a net prophet and whether or not the judge in this case had made a clear air even by whether you take the state's position or our position before you determine whether it's a fundamental error whether or not the judges made an er question does it rise to the level of plain here i believe so because again i think that you need to look at the tricky question before it becomes tricky which is whether which ever way you look at proceeds the judge ward plane error before it analyzes if it's a fundamental error if you look at the way the judge analyze just the work process just to determine how much money if it all was money laundered or laundered he made the mistake whether it's nat or gross he made a mistake because he never reached that decision that is he didn't say i find for example that there was a gross amount of two million dollars and it's also very telling in the way that he reduced the restitution he didn't know himself how much money was taken or not taken a restitution is a certain amount that's not an arbitrary amount that you up pluck out of the air when you order somebody to give back money you ordered him to give a certain amount that was taken or longer or such you don't pluck it out of the air and say ok she should pay two million dollars and then reduce it to one point two million dollars regardless of what could judge right he did say did see it as a sentencing remedy however when you have a sentencing remedy you first have to look in illinois police and the classification whether it's a class one class two or class three felony or less and therefore in illinois unlike the federal statute where we have the federal sentencing guideline we don't have that in illinois we have a classification system and this is the way this government was found guilty it would have been a class one rather than a class or less thank you i'd like to go back to justice freeman's question about santos and lock step the locks of doctrine is is only for constitutional adjudication and in this case we're asking the court to look to illinois statutes to determine what the term proceeds means and the key distinction between santos and this case is that in santo's the supreme court's was unable to find a common meaning for the term proceeds in the federal criminal code in fact there were at least once at least one and maybe two statutes that define proceeds to mean net profits that's not the case in illinois law i to to go to the questions about the merger problem in this case and the people suppose a failure to prove how much money was laundered in this case the evidence shows that more than three hundred thousand dollars was was laundered between you petey's corporate account codefendants personal account and ultimately to the defendant's account  and in this case there's no issue of the defendant sentence being increased soley because of the money laundering charge the defendant was charged with theft vendor fraud and money laundering all in excess of one hundred thousand dollars and she received and so the penalties for those offenses are the same and she received concurrent sixty six month sentences on those on those offenses so there's no issue of a perverse result in this case define for the meaning of an undefined term and finally on the plane air questions this court recognized in people versus pilot koski that the similarities between this court's plane air rule and the federal plane air rule and both rules require a finding that the air was clear obvious and we cited house he and people versus givens in our reply brief and there is no further questions at this time we ask you to reverse the appellate court's judgment thank you thank you number one one zero nine two zero people versus she is me he's number one one zero three three eight people versus government is taking under advisement agenda number three