Opinion ID: 569192
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Maurice Isabel

Text: 38
39 A financial transaction is defined in relevant part as a transaction ... involving one or more monetary instruments. 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(4). [M]onetary instruments include personal checks. Id. § 1956(c)(5). Thus, Isabel's payroll check scheme involved monetary instruments and constituted a series of financial transactions. See United States v. Jackson, 935 F.2d 832, 841 (7th Cir.1991) (Writing a check, whether for cash or to a vendor who has provided services, falls within the definition of a 'financial transaction' ). 40 Isabel contends, however, that beginning in 1987, the year section 1956 went into effect, 14 Lemieux tendered Isabel only enough cash to cover the requisite income tax, social security and workers' compensation insurance deductions from a gross salary of the amount Lemieux supposedly was earning. Isabel then would write a check to Lemieux in the amount of the net wages. But rather than depositing the check in his bank account, as had been their previous practice, Lemieux then simply endorsed the check and gave it back to Isabel. Consequently, according to Isabel, Lemieux acquired no laundered money from Isabel after section 1956 went into effect. 41 We need not address the merits of this claim. 15 Lemieux provided the only direct evidence of the details of his financial relationship with Isabel. Lemieux testified on at least two occasions that, beginning in 1987, he endorsed M.G. Masonry checks back over to Isabel; on at least two other occasions, however, he testified that after 1987, he himself cashed the M.G. Masonry checks received from Isabel. The jury was entitled, at the very least, to find that there were post-1987 financial transactions between Isabel and Lemieux identical in design to the pre-1987 payroll check transactions. 42
43 Section 1956(a)(1) only criminalizes financial transactions involving the proceeds of an unlawful activity specified in section 1956(c)(7), 16 conducted or attempted by a person with knowledge that the proceeds were from some form of unlawful activity, not necessarily one specified in section 1956(c)(7). See supra note 13. 44 There was ample evidence that Isabel well knew that the monies he received from Lemieux in exchange for M.G. Masonry payroll checks represented cocaine trafficking proceeds. First, there was evidence that Lemieux had no legitimate source of income, and appellants have pointed to nothing in the record, nor have we discovered anything, to indicate that Isabel had any basis for believing otherwise. Second, Lemieux actually told Isabel that he sold drugs for a living. Third, as far back as 1983 Isabel had been informed by Lemieux that Lemieux's first cash disbursement to Isabel, in the amount of $19,200, had come from selling drugs. Isabel knew that Lemieux was arrested on drug charges in 1987. On a later occasion, Lemieux told Isabel that Descoteaux sold drugs for him. Given the strength of the evidence that Isabel knew that the monies tendered by Lemieux were drug trafficking proceeds, the jury rationally could have concluded that Isabel intended to conduct financial transactions involving Lemieux's drug proceeds by means of the payroll check scheme. Cf. United States v. Blackman, 904 F.2d 1250, 1257 (8th Cir.1990) (evidence that defendant was engaged in drug trafficking, and had no legitimate source of income, was enough to establish unlawful provenance of funds); United States v. Jackson, 935 F.2d 832, 840 (7th Cir.1991) (unnecessary to trace funds in order to show they were proceeds of specified unlawful activity). 45
46 There was ample evidence that Isabel was well aware that the purpose of the payroll check scheme was to conceal the source of Lemieux's drug trafficking proceeds. See 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) & (c)(7). First, the obvious primary effect of the payroll scheme was to convert the drug trafficking proceeds Lemieux would tender to Isabel into what would appear to the outside world to be legitimate income. Second, the telltale circumstantial setting in which Isabel did business with Lemieux, including Isabel's knowledge that Lemieux was a longtime drug dealer, Lemieux's statement to Isabel, I need at least $700 a week, and Lemieux's explanation that he wanted to get on the payroll so that he could pay taxes, was sufficient to undergird a reasonable finding that Isabel knew that the purpose of the payroll check scheme was to conceal and disguise these drug trafficking proceeds. Cf. United States v. Massac, 867 F.2d 174, 177-78 (3d Cir.1989) (evidence that defendant engaged in drug trafficking and used unusual channels to transfer cash overseas, sufficient to show knowledge that financial transactions were designed to launder drug proceeds). 47 Isabel contends that the evidence did not show that by engaging in the payroll check scheme he intended to conceal or disguise Lemieux's drug trafficking proceeds. Assuming, without deciding, that section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) requires proof of intent to conceal or disguise proceeds of specified unlawful activity, compare supra p. 1201 (setting out elements of § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i)), Isabel's knowing participation in the payroll check scheme unquestionably demonstrated such intent, as it manifestly facilitated the known purpose of the payroll check scheme; i.e., the concealment of Lemieux's drug trafficking proceeds. See Direct Sales Co. v. United States, 319 U.S. 703, 712 & n. 8, 63 S.Ct. 1265, 1269 & n. 8, 87 L.Ed. 1674 (1943) (knowledge of coconspirator's unlawful objective, combined with defendant's active role in conspiracy, sufficient to prove intent to further unlawful objective; in some circumstances involving isolated or casual transactions not amounting to a course of business, mere evidence of knowledge of alleged coconspirator's unlawful objective will not by itself support a finding of intent on the part of the defendant to achieve same unlawful objective). 48 Moreover, Isabel had a financial motive for laundering Lemieux's drug monies. Isabel utilized the ostensible business expenses represented by the payroll check disbursements to reduce his business tax liability, see Direct Sales, 319 U.S. at 713, 63 S.Ct. at 1270 (profit to be derived from participation constitutes stake in venture). Although evidence of a financial stake in the venture is not essential to show that the defendant intended to facilitate the unlawful objective of the conspiracy, id., it is plainly probative of such an intent. See United States v. Aponte-Suarez, 905 F.2d 483, 491 (1st Cir.) (stake in outcome of conspiracy), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 531, 112 L.Ed.2d 541 (1990), and --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 975, 112 L.Ed.2d 1061 (1991); United States v. Garcia-Rosa, 876 F.2d 209, 216 (1st Cir.1989) (same), vacated on other grounds, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 377, 112 L.Ed.2d 391 (1990); aff'd, 930 F.2d 951 (1st Cir.1991). Nor does the evidence that Isabel may have had other motives for entering into the payroll check scheme, such as tax evasion, detract from the probativeness of Isabel's knowledge of Lemieux's money laundering aims on the issue of Isabel's willingness to facilitate their achievement. Section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) merely requires, inter alia, that the defendant have known that the transaction was designed in whole or in part  to conceal or disguise the proceeds of specified unlawful activity. Cf. United States v. Cambara, 902 F.2d 144, 147 (1st Cir.1990) (commission of substantive offense which was object of alleged conspiracy need not have been sole motive, or even the primary motive, of the coconspirators). In sum, even without considering Isabel's admission to Scott that he laundered the money, there was overwhelming evidence that Isabel knowingly agreed to conduct financial transactions designed to disguise the source of actual proceeds from Lemieux's cocaine trafficking. 17