Money laundering is rarely the case. It is the count added to the case — to raise the maximum from ten years to twenty, to bring in forfeiture, and to freeze the assets that would otherwise pay for the defense.
It is also the count with the most demanding elements, and the one where the government most often proves the wrong thing.
The two statutes, and why the difference is worth fighting over
The broader offense requires a financial transaction, knowledge that the property was the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity — you need not have known which — and then one of four specific purposes: to promote the underlying crime, to evade tax, to conceal the nature or source of the funds, or to avoid a reporting requirement. It carries twenty years.
The narrower offense requires only that you knowingly engaged in a monetary transaction of more than ten thousand dollars in criminally derived property. No intent to promote. No intent to conceal. You need not even have known the source offense was one that qualifies. It carries ten years.
That difference is not academic. Beyond the ten-year gap in the maximum, the sentencing guideline adds two levels for the broader offense and only one for the narrower, and the enhancement for sophisticated laundering attaches only to the broader one. Moving a case from the first statute to the second changes the guideline range materially, and it is frequently the most valuable thing that happens in the negotiation.
What the government has to prove, and where it fails
A financial transaction — not just moving money. The transaction element is broad, covering transfers of funds and monetary instruments and transactions through financial institutions. But it has limits: the Fifth Circuit held in 2025 that physically carrying cash in a car, without more, is not a financial transaction.
Promotion requires intent, not effect. It is not enough that the transaction happened to further the underlying crime. The government must prove you engaged in it intending to further that activity. Paying co-conspirators so the scheme continues qualifies. Paying the ordinary running costs of a business — even a business tainted by fraud — does not automatically qualify, and the Fifth Circuit has reversed promotion convictions where the payments were customary business expenses rather than transactions designed to advance the scheme.
Concealment requires purpose, not method. This is the single most productive defense in the area. The Supreme Court drew the line in a case out of Texas: there is a difference between concealing something in order to transport it and transporting something in order to conceal it. Evidence of how money was moved does not establish why. Hiding cash in a vehicle, using cash rather than banks, being secretive — those describe method. The government must prove the transaction was designed to disguise the nature, source, ownership or control of the funds.
The Fifth Circuit applies that seriously. It has reversed a concealment conviction where the defendant moved money between his own accounts and bought property in his own name, with no nominees and no complicated structure — holding that more than a trivial motivation to conceal is required. In 2025 it held the concealment theory insufficient where the only evidence was that drug couriers used cash to avoid detection, because that was the how the Supreme Court had already excluded. What does support concealment: third-party nominees, deposits structured below reporting thresholds, layering through multiple accounts.
The other two theories
Most cases are charged under the domestic transaction provision, but two others appear often enough to matter.
Moving money across the border. A separate provision reaches transporting, transmitting or transferring funds or monetary instruments into or out of the United States, either with intent to promote the underlying crime or knowing the funds are proceeds and that the movement is designed to conceal or to evade a reporting requirement. It carries the same twenty-year maximum. The concealment requirement is the same one discussed above, and it was in a cross-border transport case that the Supreme Court drew the purpose-versus-method line in the first place.
The sting provision. Where the money came from an undercover agent, the property does not have to be criminal proceeds at all — the government’s representation that it is takes the place of actual proceeds. What the government must prove is that the representation was made and that the defendant proceeded with one of the prohibited purposes. The Fifth Circuit has held the representation need not be recited formally before each transaction; it is enough that the agent communicated that the funds were proceeds of a specified crime. Sting cases are therefore defended on intent and on entrapment rather than on the source of the funds.
What counts as the underlying crime is extremely broad. The list of qualifying offenses runs to dozens of federal and state crimes and includes mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, drug offenses, bribery, extortion, federal health care offenses and a range of foreign conduct. The government must prove that underlying offense to the criminal standard as an element — but it does not need a separate conviction for it, and a laundering conviction can survive even where the underlying counts are reversed, provided the proceeds element was independently established.
Proceeds, and the merger problem
This is the technical heart of the defense.
The Supreme Court once held, in a fractured decision, that “proceeds” could mean profits rather than gross receipts — because if receipts counted, every underlying crime would automatically generate a laundering charge as well. Congress responded by defining proceeds to include gross receipts, which resolved most of it.
But the merger argument survives in two specific forms, and the Fifth Circuit recognizes both.
The crime was not finished. Money does not become proceeds until the underlying offense is complete. Where the charged transaction is the predicate crime — paying the purchase price in a drug transaction, for instance — the funds were never proceeds of a completed offense, and the Fifth Circuit has reversed convictions on exactly that basis.
The payment was an essential expense of the same crime. Even under the gross-receipts definition, a payment out of receipts to cover the costs of the very crime that generated them can still present a merger problem — as opposed to a payment out of profits made in support of new crimes. The question is whether the laundering count is built on the same continuing conduct as the predicate, or on separate conduct.
Where the laundering transaction is genuinely separate from and later than the predicate — the fraud is complete, the money has landed, and it is then moved — the merger argument does not help.
Structuring, which is its own offense
Depositing or withdrawing cash in amounts designed to keep a bank from filing a currency transaction report is a separate crime carrying five years, or ten where it is done while violating another law or as part of a pattern involving more than a hundred thousand dollars in a year.
The willfulness rule has changed and clients are often working from the old one. The Supreme Court once held the government had to prove the defendant knew structuring itself was illegal. Congress then moved the penalty into its own provision without that requirement. For structuring charged under the current provision, the government need not prove you knew structuring was unlawful — only that you structured with the purpose of evading the reporting obligation.
Forfeiture of the structured funds follows, though the statute now restricts seizures where the money came from a lawful source and was not structured to conceal some other crime — a response to seizures from small businesses that had done nothing else wrong. Forfeiture in this area is also subject to the constitutional limit on excessive fines, assessed through a proportionality test the Fifth Circuit applies.
Forfeiture and the money to pay for a defense
Forfeiture on conviction is mandatory and reaches property “involved in” the offense — the funds laundered, any fee taken for laundering them, and property used to make the laundering easier. Where the tainted property is gone, spent or commingled, the government can pursue other assets up to its value. There is a limit for defendants who acted merely as intermediaries: substitute assets are unavailable unless the defendant conducted at least three transactions totalling a hundred thousand dollars or more within a year.
Before trial, the government routinely freezes assets. Two rules govern:
- A defendant cannot force a pre-trial hearing to challenge the grand jury’s probable-cause finding in order to unfreeze tainted assets, even to retain counsel.
- But the government may not freeze untainted assets that the defendant needs to retain counsel of choice. That is a Sixth Amendment limit.
The practical consequence is that the first fight in these cases is often about tracing — establishing which restrained assets are genuinely untainted — and it has to be made early, because it determines whether there is money to fund the defense at all.
What we do
We defend money laundering and structuring charges in federal court, including counts added to health care fraud, pandemic-relief fraud, narcotics and international transfer cases, and we handle the forfeiture and pre-trial restraint litigation that accompanies them.
The work includes attacking the concealment and promotion elements on their own terms, litigating merger and the proceeds question, contesting the guideline calculation and the sophisticated-laundering enhancement, tracing untainted assets to release funds for defense counsel, and appeals.
Questions we are asked
They added a laundering count to my fraud case. Is that automatic?
It is common but it is not automatic, and it is not always sound. The laundering count requires elements the fraud count does not — a qualifying transaction, and a specific purpose to promote or conceal. Prosecutors sometimes charge it on facts that only show the money moved.
I moved my own money through my own accounts.
That is frequently a defense rather than an offense. Spending or transferring money openly in your own name, without nominees or layering, has been held insufficient to prove a design to conceal. The government has to show purpose, not just movement.
They said hiding the cash proves concealment.
That conflates how with why. The Supreme Court has held that evidence of the method of transport does not establish that the purpose was to conceal, and the Fifth Circuit has applied that to reverse convictions.
What is the difference between the two statutes for me?
Roughly: ten years versus twenty at the top, a one-level versus two-level guideline enhancement, and exposure to the sophisticated-laundering enhancement under only one of them. Where the facts permit, moving the case to the narrower statute is one of the more valuable outcomes available short of dismissal.
Do they have to convict me of the underlying crime first?
No. The government must prove the underlying offense as an element, to the criminal standard, but it needs no separate conviction — and a laundering conviction can survive even where the underlying counts are reversed on appeal, so long as the proceeds element was independently proved.
The government froze my accounts and I cannot pay a lawyer.
Assets genuinely untainted by the alleged offense cannot be restrained before trial if you need them to retain counsel of choice. Tainted assets can be. Establishing which is which is the first application to make, and delay is costly.
I kept deposits under ten thousand dollars because I did not want the paperwork.
That is the offense. It does not matter that the money was lawfully earned, and under the current provision it does not matter whether you knew structuring itself was illegal.
Results depend on the facts of each matter. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future matter.