The Hon. Scott O. Wright, Jr., United States District Judge 1

for the Western District of Missouri, acting on the recommendation

of the Hon. William A. Knox, United States Magistrate Judge for the

Western District of Missouri.

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 96-3080WM

_____________

United States of America, *

*

Appellant, *

* On Appeal from the United

v. * States District Court

* for the Western District

* of Missouri.

Vickie S. Cabrales, *

*

Appellee. *

___________

 Submitted: January 17, 1997 

 Filed: March 24, 1997

___________

Before RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Chief Judge, ROSS and BEAM, Circuit Judges.

___________

RICHARD S. ARNOLD, Chief Judge.

Vickie Cabrales was charged with one count of conspiring to launder

money and two counts of money laundering in the District Court for the

Western District of Missouri. The District Court1
 The Court did not dismiss Count I, the conspiracy charge,

2

because overt acts did occur in Missouri. Venue is proper in a

conspiracy case in any jurisdiction in which an overt act in

furtherance of the conspiracy was committed by any of the

conspirators. See United States v. Bascope-Zurita, 68 F.3d 1057,

1062 (8th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 741 (1996). Count

I is not part of this appeal. It remains pending in the District

Court.

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dismissed the two counts of money laundering as improperly venued in that

Court. The Government appeals the dismissal. We affirm.

I.

Vickie Cabrales was charged with the following three offenses:

conspiracy to avoid a transaction-reporting requirement (Count I), 18

U.S.C. §§ 371, 1956(a)(1)(B)(ii); conducting a financial transaction to

avoid a transaction-reporting requirement (Count II), 18 U.S.C.

§ 1956(a)(1)(B)(ii); and engaging in a monetary transaction in criminally

derived property of a value greater than $10,000 (Count III), 18 U.S.C.

§ 1957.

The District Court dismissed Counts II and III as improperly venued

in Missouri, reasoning that none of the acts which constitutes money

laundering occurred in Missouri. The Government does not dispute that the 2

acts which form the elements of those offenses occurred outside Missouri.

It maintains, however, that the criminal offenses which necessitated the

money laundering did occur in Missouri, and that venue was therefore proper

in the Western District of Missouri under a "continuing offense" analysis.

II.

The money-laundering charges are based on a series of deposits and

withdrawals made by Cabrales at a Florida bank. The money
 Rule 18 provides, in pertinent part, that "prosecution shall 3

be had in a district in which the offense was committed." Rule 18

echoes the command of Article III of the Constitution, which

requires that, "Trial shall be held in the State where the said

Crimes shall have been committed," and of the Sixth Amendment,

which requires trial "by an impartial jury of the State and

district wherein the crime shall have been committed." U.S. Const.

art. III, § 2, cl. 3 & amend. VI.

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Cabrales deposited, and later withdrew, was traceable to illegal drug sales

which occurred in Missouri. The government asserts that since the drug

conspiracy operated in Missouri, and Cabrales was "laundering" its profits,

she can be tried in Missouri. 

Both Rule 18 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the

Constitution require that a person be tried for an offense where that

offense is committed. “[T]he locus delicti must be determined from the

3

nature of the crime alleged and the location of the act or acts

constituting it.” United States v. Anderson, 328 U.S. 699, 703 (1945). 

 The acts constituting money laundering for the purposes of this case

are outlined in §§ 1956(a)(1) and 1957, which make it a crime to: 

knowing[ly] . . . conduct[] or attempt[] to conduct

. . . a financial transaction which . . . involves

the proceeds of specified unlawful activity . . .

knowing that the transaction is designed in whole

or in part . . . to avoid a transaction reporting

requirement under State or Federal law,

and to “knowingly engage[] or attempt[] to engage in a monetary transaction

in criminally derived property that is of a value greater than $10,000 and

is derived from specified unlawful activity.”
-4-

Under 18 U.S.C. § 3237(a), “continuing offenses” are deemed

committed, and venue over those offenses is therefore proper, “in any

district in which such offense was begun, continued, or completed.” As is

clear from the statutes quoted above, Cabrales was not accused of a

“continuing offense.” She was charged with money laundering, for

transactions which began, continued, and were completed only in Florida.

That the money came from Missouri is of no moment in this case, because

Cabrales dealt with it only in Florida. Counts II and III include no act

committed by Cabrales in Missouri. Nor does the government charge that

Cabrales transported the money from Missouri to Florida. Whether that

would make a difference we need not decide in the present case.

III.

The government cites several cases which it believes should dictate

a different result. For various reasons, they do not. But because some

contain language which, if applied to Cabrales’s case, might conflict with

the result we now reach, we discuss them briefly. 

In United States v. Beddow, 957 F.2d 1330 (6th Cir. 1992), for

example, money laundering was held cognizable under § 3237(a) as a

continuing offense. The Court in Beddow held there was a money- laundering

“scheme” sufficient to confer venue on a different district from that in

which the actual transactions took place. Id. at 1336. Beddow, however,

presented different facts than the instant case. The defendant in Beddow

was convicted of the crimes which produced the funds which were laundered,

and had acquired those funds in one district and transported them into

another. While some of the language in that case might be broad enough to

cover the fact situation before us, we believe the facts that the
 The language to which we refer is the following: 4

Under section 3237(a) venue is proper in any

district where any part of the money

laundering scheme occurred. In the present

case, it is clear that the funds involved in

both money laundering counts were acquired by

selling drugs in the Western District of

Michigan. Also, Count 4 involved travel that

originated in Traverse City. We conclude that

these acts were essential elements of the

money laundering offenses and that they were

sufficient to confer venue under section

3237(a).

957 F.2d 1336. 

United States v. Sax cites Beddow for the proposition that

venue over money-laundering charges is proper in a given district

if the underlying criminal conduct (which produced the funds)

occurred in that district. 39 F.3d 1380, 1390 (7th Cir. 1994). We

note that the holding in Beddow appears to have depended on the

combination of two facts: the underlying conduct occurred in the

same district where the defendant began transportation of the funds

which were to be laundered. Were the location of the underlying

criminal conduct, standing alone, sufficient to confer venue on a

district, the money-laundering charges against Cabrales would be

appropriately venued in Missouri. To the extent Sax would produce

such a holding, we respectfully disagree.

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money-laundering conduct in Beddow extended over more than one district,

and that the defendant was convicted of involvement in each step of that

conduct, distinguish the case. That distinction explains why money

laundering might have been a continuing offense in that case and not in the

one now before us.4

The government also cites United States v. Hernando Ospina, 798 F.2d

1570 (11th Cir. 1986). In that case, two defendants were charged with

concealing material facts from the IRS. The defendants argued venue was

improper in the Southern District of Florida because the “concealment”

resulted from the non-filing of currency transaction reports in Washington,

D.C. The Ospina court
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rejected that argument, noting that, “it is undisputed that the scheme to

conceal was formulated and virtually all the affirmative acts comprising

that scheme were carried out in the Southern District of Florida.” Id. at

1577. While the non-filing of the reports may have been the ultimate

occurrence which kept information from reaching the IRS, the statute

criminalizes the entire scheme. 18 U.S.C. § 1001, under which the

defendants in Ospina were charged, makes it a crime to “knowingly and

willfully . . . conceal[] or cover[] up by any trick, scheme, or device a

material fact” in any matter within the jurisdiction of a federal agency.

The statute explicitly criminalizes the scheme itself. The acts by the

defendants in Florida were thus directly prohibited by the statute, and the

crime was “committed” at least partly in Florida. Since no acts prohibited

by 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956(a)(1)(B)(ii) and 1957 were committed by Cabrales in

Missouri, Ospina is of no help to the government in the instant case.

Finally, in United States v. Chandler, 66 F.3d 1460 (8th Cir. 1995),

a panel of our Court declined to reverse a conviction for accepting and

receiving a gratuity in connection with the making of a loan because venue

in the Eastern District of Arkansas was improper. In so doing, we affirmed

the district court’s refusal to sever those charges because they were

“inextricably linked” to the other crimes with which the defendant was

charged.

In Chandler, however, the trial jury found that venue was proper in

the Eastern District of Arkansas. The location of the crime was disputed,

and was therefore before the jury. We could have disturbed that verdict

only if no reasonable jury could have reached the conclusion that one did.

We held that the jury could reasonably have found that the crime was

committed at least partly in the Eastern District of Arkansas. There is

no factual ambiguity
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in the case now before us. Nowhere does the government allege that any

part of the money-laundering transactions in question occurred outside

Florida, and there is certainly no jury finding that they did. 

Other cases provide better guidance for the case at bar. In United

States v. Swann, 441 F.2d 1053 (D.C. Cir. 1971), the Court reversed a

district court holding that venue over a jury-tampering charge was proper

in the District of Columbia when the jury was empaneled in a District of

Columbia court but the tampering had occurred in Maryland. In reversing,

the Court declined to view the crime as a “continuing offense,” focusing

its attention on the specific facts alleged and the crime charged:

[t]he appellant’s offense was not begun in one

district and completed in another, or committed in

more than one district. The offense condemned by

the statute and charged in the indictment was

begun, carried out and completed in the State of

Maryland when the appellant “did injure the person

of said Pauline Hawkins . . ..”

Id. at 1055. 

 We have adopted that approach in prior cases in this circuit as well.

In United States v. Brakke, 934 F.2d 174 (8th Cir. 1991), defendant Brakke

was accused of obstruction of justice for failing to comply with two

federal marshals’ requests that he pull over his vehicle and get out of it

so it could be seized. The marshals began following Brakke in North

Dakota, but did not signal him to stop until after he had crossed the state

line into Minnesota. Consequently, Brakke did not refuse to comply until

he was in Minnesota. The District Court for the District of North Dakota
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dismissed the charge for lack of venue, and our Court affirmed, holding:

After reviewing the record . . . we can discern no

support for the Government’s contention that

Brakke’s obstructive conduct extended over two

districts. . . . The only acts which formed the

basis for the obstruction charge, Brakke’s passive

resistance to the marshalls’ [sic] requests that he

vacate his vehicle, occurred after Brakke had

crossed into Minnesota. Accordingly, we agree with

the district court’s ruling that venue for the

obstruction charges does not lie in the District of

North Dakota.

Id. at 176-77 (footnote omitted).

IV.

The only acts which formed the basis for the money-laundering charges

in the instant case consisted of banking transactions which Cabrales

executed only in Florida. Under these facts and the analytical framework

established in Brakke, the District Court correctly dismissed Counts II and

III as improperly venued in Missouri. Accordingly, we affirm.

A true copy.

Attest:

CLERK, U.S. COURT OF APPEALS, EIGHTH CIRCUIT.