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Syllabus
money-laundering transactions that began, continued, and were completed only in Florida. It was of no moment that the money came from Missouri, the court explained, because Cabrales dealt with it only in Florida, the money-laundering counts alleged no act committed by Cabrales 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 anterior criminal conduct that yielded the funds allegedly laundered. Contrary to the Government's contention, the crimes charged in those counts do not fit under § 3237(a) as offenses begun in Missouri and completed 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 defendant 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 launderer acquired the funds in one district and transported them into another, 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
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