thought one of the easiest ways to start is with an argument that i think is clearly the argument that clearly requires reversal in this case and i think one of the important things to look at in this case is there are two real properties involved in this case both properties have been  restraint by the government and the allegation is that these real properties the entirety of these you know properties are subject to force which are a money laundering theory so if we look at one of the properties both properties the court knows were or subsequent interest only loan dirty money was traced to the interest payments but not to the equity but let me turn to the delaware property because that's the that would be the proverbial two foot putt in this case the delaware property has the government's argument is about fifty eight thousand dollars of home improvements were paid to contractors who worked on the delaware property so even if this court assumes as the trial court did that fifty eight thousand dollars is directly traceable to equity in the delaware property the rest of the equity in that property is not proceeds and that property that's let's just take the equity out of that and say of the property the government's theory for the rest of that delaware properly been subject to proof the truth is that that property was involved in facilitating money laundering here's the problem their evidence is they say that mr miller's wife used her laptop computer to send a couple of e mails from a dollar property so if this court wants to take the position that using a computer that's located in one's home makes that home subject forfeiture then i'm wasting my time but that can't be this court needs to say as a matter of law where you're not accepting that proposition it's not in the computer facilitated money laundering argue but  the computer happened to be located in a hall or in a starbucks or in a car were also you can send an e mail and here there's really no evidence that the computer was even in the home back up your government has a burden of proof theory that most professionals work at home they work from their computer at home we've done that with the count you are looking for probable cause to believe that evidence is located in the home because the computers for when we're talking about facilitation there has to be a substantial connection between the property and the offense of forfeiture and here judge duncan using a laptop computer in one's house is not a substantial connection so that basis that's all the district court found for the delaware property to conclusions fifty eight thousand dollars proceeds because property wanted to pay some contractors and he assumed there's a dollar for dollar increase  i'm not challenging the indictment your honor since i don't know i mean i don't know i agree that the grand jury returned an indictment i didn't see what the grand jury was instructed here's my an obligation to look to see if the properties are in fact substantially connected to the activity there's no allegation that a computer was using a dollar property there's no allegation that the delaware property was purchased in a money laundering transaction what the indictment includes is a series is an allegation that there was a money laund assume that she did the enemy a balance more correctly and assume that fifty thousand dollars dirty money can be traced to payments to contractors we can assume that is fifty thousand dollars across is it doesn't mean that the whole property subject here the purpose of the spending is allegedly to do some home improvements that's not any different then spent spending dirty money to pay an electrical bill is not money laundering just spending money if you spend intent but we're not in now when we're in a fifty six in the fifty six contacts the spending has to be the purpose of the spending has to be to either conceal or promote so if you're spending dirty money to a calculation to figure out if we can figure out how much when what he the judge did is he said well they've traced three hundred thousand dollars interest only payments to mr kaplan and so we're going to give them three hundred thousand dollars of mr miller's that woody in his property even now he had at least in her nine hundred thousand one hundred thousand dollars of equity in the property probably more when interest only not came along so what's the basis for this dollar for dollar when they offer to rafferty as their as their basis for the rafferty kid said let's look at how much money went into the principal that's what we want to focus on and it didn't work and i case because no money went into the prints so th the argument that you've you grace is not an argument that the government presented it's not an argument at the trial court did the qataris court you are right they've traced proceeds to people and we're going to say that the proceeds can be glammed onto the real estate that counted as money laundering those remaining laundering transactions as alleged in the indictment overt acts in the indictment so to send him out money and the act of investing the money for improvements constitutes makes the property involved in money laundering and i will say that judge when wrote this in the compound case a few years ago and in the canal case the judge when wro improvements in the property and that is the transaction that involves a property but i would like to finish were judge when wrote which was he cited see united states versus one single family residence at fifteen six o three eighty fifth avenue which is an eleventh circuit case from  one and then judge will wrote pontus stating that if one is a wrongdoer any amount of the invested proceeds traceable to drug activities forfeits the entire property so it doesn't matter here that it was only fifty eight thousand dollars that was invested in improvements in the delaware property because the property was involved in the acquisition of the improvements that the su a proceeds  proceeds were invested in improvements in that property the entire property is subject to forfeiture now the question about that still a sion that's a separate question and i believe and i agree with mr campbell it's a tougher question i think the government wins on and i think it's it's a done deal and my opponents are words a two foot putt that fifty eight thousand dollars of fraud proceeds used to purchase improvements in the delaware property mean at this stage based use of money to purchase improvements out of their lower property legally could not constitute involved could not legally in mean that the property was involved then i think he could challenge it but he cannot challenge the allegation that the property was involved by reason of the investment of fifty eight thousand dollars to improve it so that the overt acts were part of the conspirators correct correct and also we had we did have the hearing and this government listed fifty four separate uses of the money that comes to the money laundering a number of them totaled the fifty eight thousand single delmar property touring the three hundred something thousand to the region your property and they were not contested they were contested to the extent of six thousand dollars now our property and thirty thousand dollars on the virginia property but ninety percent of the you cannot challenge the finding of the charge of the allegation you can challenge the nexus between the property and the charge but you cannot challenge the charge i'd like i'd like to turn to one other point about this interest only when the loan when the property was sold in two thousand and sixteen to pay off was not six hundred fifty thousand the payoff was six hundred eighty six thousand and that's because as interest accrues the l holders lien expands to take up more of the equity the property value and the owners the borrowers equity shrinks and every time he pays interest the borrowers equity increases dollar for dollar with when he pays makes an interest payment so and any of us know from ever having sold the house the amount you get at the it depends on what day of the month you sell the house because interest accrues daily and affects you every month in this case he was painting he was doing eight thousand one hundred twenty five thousand interest every month the equity in their property went down eight thousand one hundred twenty five dollars and when he paid that interest his equity went back up eight thousand one hundred twenty five dollars so it's it is ain't it's a misconception suggests that payments on an interest only loan don't affect equity they do affect that route dollar  s what does that how does that relate either traceable to or involved in what is it it has no relevance to traceable to it has it has relevance to involve them in the sense that court court among others has said that a property is used to facilitate a crime constitutes being involved in the crime in the shifa really case which is about twenty five years old it was a drug case and was a doctor who was writing prescriptions from his office and house office i think the whole thing was that the use of his office to write those prescriptions meant that the property itself was subject to forfeiture as having f assuming he would see even assuming that the property is used to facilitate the crime by writing up by by by by using the computer there it would it would be an excessive fine to forfeit the house on the basis of using the computer in that house to send a few emails and there may be some merit to that argument in a different case but an excessive fines argument makes no sense in this case because the victims the autism charity the state senator and the arrow and the skylane company were out over one point four million dollars and the total amount restrained in this case is less than that so there cannot be an eighth amendment issue here so if as a legal matter the use of property to facilitate a money one of your friends by giving cover or a place a place from which the money laundering transaction can occur that is clearly by long term long precedent that could probably involved in the money laundering whether it should be for federal because of the limited nature of the transactions of the facilitation that's an eighth amendment issue which doesn't go anywhere in this particular case say is let me distinguish the mere spending and stand what we do have here is we have a conspiracy to invest fifty four thousand dollars into the delaware property to hide it i'm sorry i i honestly don't transaction like a stand with the dirty money the argument is that you gauge in the transaction to rid of a hoe to renovate the home and if the purpose is to run of it the homeowner turn on the lights or to put gas in the car dirty cash but here would this is why that's the easy case where we send out money laundering the hard cases if we take the cash and we say ok we're spending the can and the dirty money on the light again easy case would be if i'm taking cash and i say ok now i want to launder this trash so what i want to do is this is fraud proceeds and i don't want the government to catch me with the fraud proceeds or so i'm going to turn them into real estate i'm going to go buy a house now with my front proceeds so it looks the cash now looks like real property you change the form of it and i did it with the intent to hide the value of the cash it's if it's you have to show intent to conceal in the spend i have to have an intent to conceal not just an intent to spend probable cause right and if you look at the indictment so let's go back to the indictment there is where i think the position from the government counsel who just came up here is that there might be some theory that we might have told the grand jury that might have worked to get this indicted in a way where the grand jury could stand and we find that the fifty eight thousand dollars was moved into contractors to move money to the equity of the house in a way that would hide it that didn't go into or do i mean that that's not in the indictment there's nothing there's no you know when you look at that what the  includes is a bunch of financial transactions where money is moved and when we did the hearing and i asked the accountant about one of these she didn't even know again back to money laundering you have to have proceeded before you c proceeds i asked her why she thought there was an intent to conceal and she said because mrs miller took money from the account that she wasn't supposed to spend money from and moved it to her personal account and then spent it from there and the point there is when the money was moved to a personal account that's when it was stolen so you can't say that she moved the money into the account money laundering conspiracy or whatever that means i don't know what that means then they then they list a bunch of of transactions where money is moved from one account to another but it doesn't say anywhere that that the purpose of this indictment or the purpose of this transaction the fifty thousand dollars that was given a home improvement was to hide the fact that you know high into the equity of this home some fifty thousand dollars or some other amount whatever it is