Opinion ID: 761781
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Wire Fraud Proceeds

Text: 21 The money laundering statute penalizes attempts to conceal or disguise the nature of proceeds from a specified unlawful activity enumerated in the statute. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956(a)(1)(B)(i), (a)(2)(B)(i), (c)(7). Although the wire fraud scheme charged in the indictment is a statutorily specified unlawful activity, the defendants argue that their money laundering convictions must be reversed because the only proceeds proved to have been laundered by the Zvis were the proceeds from the pre-robbery sale of gold, not the subsequent insurance proceeds received from Lloyd's. The gold sale proceeds, they contend, were not proceeds from wire fraud but at most proceeds from simple theft, which is not a specified unlawful activity under the money laundering statute. See id. We reject the defendants' narrow definition of proceeds. 22 As the government points out, the insurance proceeds received from Lloyd's were used primarily to pay creditors and consignors. The proceeds from the pre-robbery sale of gold represented the defendants' take from the scheme. Thus, the jury could reasonably have found that the sale of gold was part of a single scheme to commit wire fraud and that the proceeds from the sale of gold constituted the requisite proceeds from specified unlawful activity under the money laundering statute. See Potamitis, 739 F.2d at 788 (scheme to rob, ruse by one of conspirators to play the victim, and scheme to conceal and divide up proceeds from robbery were all part and parcel of a single conspiracy). It is immaterial that the defendants kept the gold proceeds and used the insurance proceeds to pay creditors instead of the other way around; at the end of the day, the defendants had their loot as a result of the fraud and had laundered it. Accordingly, we hold that there was sufficient evidence that the requisite proceeds were laundered to support the jury's verdict on the money laundering charges.