Cite as: 524 U. S. 1 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
from the nature of the crime alleged and the location of the act or acts constituting it." Anderson, 328 U. S., at 703. Here, the crimes described in Counts II and III are defined in statutory proscriptions, 18 U. S. C. §§ 1956(a)(1)(B)(ii), 1957, that interdict only the financial transactions (acts located entirely in Florida), not the anterior criminal conduct that yielded the funds allegedly laundered.
Congress has provided by statute for offenses "begun in one district and completed in another"; such offenses may be "prosecuted in any district in which [the] offense was begun, continued, or completed." 18 U. S. C. § 3237(a). The Government urges that the money-laundering crimes described in Counts II and III of the indictment against Cabrales fit the § 3237(a) description. We therefore confront and decide this question: Do those counts charge crimes begun in Missouri and completed in Florida, rendering venue proper in Missouri, or do they delineate 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 in the Missouri drug trafficking. See 18 U. S. C. § 2 (one who aids or abets an offense "is punishable as a principal"). Cabrales is charged in the money-laundering counts with criminal activity "after the fact" of an offense begun and completed by others. Cf. § 3 ("Whoever, knowing that an offense against the United States has been committed, . . . assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his . . . punishment, is an accessory after the fact," punishable not as a principal, but by a term of imprisonment or fine generally "not more than one-half the maximum . . . prescribed for the punishment of the principal[.]").
Whenever a defendant acts "after the fact" to conceal a crime, it might be said, as the Government urges in this case, that the first crime is an essential element of the second, see Brief for United States 9, and that the second
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