Money Laundering In Connection to Drug Sales – California Health & Safety Code 11370.9
Money laundering really has to do with proceeds from drugs being moved in and out of bank accounts or being used for other purposes to avoid detection by law enforcement. In other words, there's proceeds from drugs and then there's money generated and the question becomes how do you use that money in order to gain a benefit?
You could run it through a business. You can put it into an account. That's another way that the money could be laundered. In other words, you're really trying to clean the money. You're trying to make it so that the money can be utilized and law enforcement, the DEA or anybody involved with the government can't figure out where that money is coming from.
But a lot of times, prosecutors, judges, other law enforcement people are able to figure out — when someone's bank account that is getting thousands of dollars placed into it — and that person either doesn't work or doesn't carry the type of job that could possibly net that much money, is simply being used as a pawn in order to move drug proceeds in and out.
That's how they clean it. That's how they launder it. They buy businesses. They buy homes. They've taken the money that's being used for drugs and they're getting assets from it and the government is able to figure that out because they see these accounts getting money and they see where the money is coming from.
Government Tracking Drug Transactions
People think that somehow just because they run it through an innocent person's account, that somehow cleans the money. But if the government can track it there coming from a drug transactions, then they're going to seize it, they're going to charge the poor person whose accounts being used and they're going to charge the person who has generated the money if they can figure out who that is.
Unfortunately, a lot of these people cloak themselves and use other people who are desperate for money and use their account so that nobody can figure it out.
Then the government comes in and grabs the person whose account it is, and that person is saying, I didn't know anything, but then the government stares them in the fact and says look, you're laundering money related to drugs.
You're using your business, for example. How could your business possibly get all of this money? Where's your business getting the funds that are in the account? Unless you can show me that you're generating it through selling lawful goods, we're not fooled. We want your records. We want to see what you're doing.
So, money laundering in its most basic form is used with drugs all the time throughout the country. Not just California. This type of drug crime is covered under California Health & Safety Code 11370.9.
Experienced Drug Crime Lawyer
Not just Los Angeles and the feds and even the state government know how to track this type of activity. If you're charged with money laundering relating to drugs, you better get an attorney quick because this is a serious crime and a lot of times there are defenses that you can utilize.
A lot of times you really don't realize that you somehow got tangled up in a web of drugs and money and your business and your bank account is being used and you didn't know that it was going to be used for that purpose. You were tricked and that happens all the time.
So, if you've got one of these cases, pick up the phone and speak to an experienced drug crime attorney. Make the call and we'll get this thing moving in the right direction.
