Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 52.0

524us1$71P 02-16-99 22:29:48 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 524 U. S. 1 (1998)

7

Opinion of the Court

from the nature of the crime alleged and the location of the
act or acts constituting it.” Anderson, 328 U. S., at 703.
Here, the crimes described in Counts II and III are deﬁned
in statutory proscriptions, 18 U. S. C. §§ 1956(a)(1)(B)(ii),
1957, that interdict only the ﬁnancial transactions (acts lo-
cated entirely in Florida), not the anterior criminal conduct
that yielded the funds allegedly laundered.

Congress has provided by statute for offenses “begun in
one district and completed in another”; such offenses may be
“prosecuted in any district in which [the] offense was begun,
continued, or completed.”
18 U. S. C. § 3237(a). The Gov-
ernment urges that the money-laundering crimes described
in Counts II and III of the indictment against Cabrales ﬁt
the § 3237(a) description. We therefore confront and decide
this question: Do those counts charge crimes begun in Mis-
souri and completed in Florida, rendering venue proper in
Missouri, or do they delineate crimes that took place wholly
within Florida?

Notably, the counts at issue do not charge Cabrales with
conspiracy; they do not link her to, or assert her responsibil-
ity for, acts done by others. Nor do they charge her as an
aider or abettor in the Missouri drug trafﬁcking. See 18
U. S. C. § 2 (one who aids or abets an offense “is punishable as
a principal”). Cabrales is charged in the money-laundering
counts with criminal activity “after the fact” of an offense
begun and completed by others. Cf. § 3 (“Whoever, knowing
that an offense against the United States has been com-
mitted, . . . assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent
his . . . punishment, is an accessory after the fact,” punishable
not as a principal, but by a term of imprisonment or ﬁne
generally “not more than one-half the maximum . . . pre-
scribed for the punishment of the principal[.]”).

Whenever a defendant acts “after the fact” to conceal a
crime, it might be said, as the Government urges in this
case, that the ﬁrst crime is an essential element of the
second, see Brief for United States 9, and that the second