8
Opinion of the Court
facilitated the first or made it profitable by impeding its detection, see id., at 14. But the question here is the place appropriate to try the "after the fact" actor. As the Government recognizes, it is immaterial whether that actor knew where the first crime was committed. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 5-6. 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." 109 F. 3d, at 472.2
Money laundering, the Court of Appeals acknowledged, 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. Id., at 473. But that is tellingly not this case. In the counts at issue, the Government indicted Cabrales "for transactions which began, continued, and were completed only in Florida." Id., at 472. Under these circumstances, venue in Missouri is improper.
The Government identified Hyde v. United States, 225 U. S. 347 (1912), and In re Palliser, 136 U. S. 257 (1890), as the two best cases for its position that money launderers can in all cases be prosecuted at the place where the funds they handled were generated. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 6. Neither decision warrants the ruling the Government here seeks.
In Hyde, the defendants were convicted in the District of Columbia of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Although none of the defendants had entered the District as part of the conspiracy, venue was nevertheless appropriate, the Court ruled, based on the overt acts of a co-conspirator there. 225 U. S., at 363. By contrast, the counts at issue in this case allege no conspiracy. They describe activity in which Cabrales alone, untied to others, engaged.
2 Cf. United States v. Lanoue, 137 F. 3d 656, 661 (CA1 1998) (stating that crime of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1), occurs only where the firearm is actually possessed).
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