Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 47

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

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UNITED STATES v. CABRALES

Syllabus

money-laundering transactions that began, continued, and were com-
It was of no moment that the money came from
pleted only in Florida.
Missouri, the court explained, because Cabrales dealt with it only in
Florida, the money-laundering counts alleged no act committed by Ca-
brales in Missouri, and the Government did not assert that Cabrales
transported the money from Missouri to Florida.

Held: Missouri is not a place of proper venue for the money-laundering
offenses with which Cabrales is charged. The locus delicti must be
determined from the nature of the crime alleged and the location of
the act or acts constituting it. United States v. Anderson, 328 U. S.
699, 703. Here, the crimes charged in Counts II and III are deﬁned in
statutory proscriptions, §§ 1956(a)(1)(B)(ii) and 1957, that interdict only
the ﬁnancial transactions (acts located entirely in Florida), not the ante-
rior criminal conduct that yielded the funds allegedly laundered. Con-
trary to the Government’s contention, the crimes charged in those
counts do not ﬁt under § 3237(a) as offenses begun in Missouri and com-
pleted in Florida, but are 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 responsibility for, acts done by
others. Nor do they charge her as an aider or abettor, punishable as a
principal, in the Missouri drug trafﬁcking, see 18 U. S. C. § 2. Rather,
those counts charge her with criminal activity “after the fact” of an
offense begun and completed by others. Cf. § 3. Whenever a defend-
ant acts “after the fact” to conceal a crime, it might be said, as the
Government urges, that the ﬁrst crime is an essential element of the
second, and that the second facilitated the ﬁrst or made it proﬁtable by
impeding its detection. But the question here is the place appropriate
to try the “after the fact” actor.
It is immaterial whether that actor
knew where the ﬁrst crime was committed. The money launderer must
know she is dealing with funds derived from speciﬁed unlawful activity,
here, drug trafﬁcking, but the Missouri venue of that activity is, as the
Eighth Circuit said, of no moment. Money laundering arguably might
rank as a continuing offense, triable in more than one place, if the laun-
derer acquired the funds in one district and transported them into an-
other, but that is tellingly not this case. Neither Hyde v. United States,
225 U. S. 347, nor In re Palliser, 136 U. S. 257, supports the Govern-
ment’s position that money launderers can in all cases be prosecuted at
the place where the funds they handled were generated. Hyde involved
a conspiracy prosecution in which the Court held venue proper in the
District of Columbia based on overt acts committed by a co-conspirator
in the District. Palliser concerned a prosecution for mailings from
New York to Connecticut in which the Court held Connecticut venue