NACDL has proposed several technical statutory amendments to rectify the money laundering regime’s most serious flaws by simplifying and clarifying current law, facilitating compliance efforts by individuals and businesses, and by focusing federal law enforcement on serious misconduct. [Released August 2001]

News stories on federal money laundering, reports submitted by the Department of Justice, as required by the Fraud Enforcement & Recovery Act (FERA)

White collar financial and economic cases can involve voluminous and confusing documents, but these cases need not be feared. The authors discuss the importance of financial records received as well as exculpatory records that are sometimes not provided. Is it a criminal case, a civil case, or just a bad investment? The answer is almost always somewhere in the documents.

Board member and Forfeiture Committee chair David B. Smith's written statement to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security regarding international money laundering and the U.S. financial system.

Letter with the Heritage Foundation to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding prosecutions of public corruption and the changes proposed in the Public Corruption Prosecution Improvements Act (S. 49, 2009).

Letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding overcriminalizing and overcharging outlined in the Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2019 (S. 1883).

NACDL Board member Barry Pollack's written statement to the House Judiciary Committee regarding federal criminal fraud laws.

Amicus curiae brief of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in support of Defendants-Appellants in Support of Affirmance of Dismissal of money laundering conspiracy count.

Argument: In that Congress provided an exception to the money laundering statutes, 18 U.S.C. §1956-1957, for bona fideattorneys’ fees – transactions “necessary to preserve” an individual’s Sixth Amendment right to representation—the government’s parsimonious view of what is “necessary” to a defense threatens to hamstring all complex criminal defense efforts by interjecting the threat of prosecution into every monetary transaction over $10,000 in which counsel enters. The threat of possible prosecution of retained counsel in virtually any case may well dissuade attorneys from taking on clients in certain types of cases, thus depriving some defendants of their right to counsel of choice.

Arguing, inter alia, that the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the term “proceeds” as limited to profits is consistent with congressional intent and necessary to prevent defendants from inappropriately being punished twice (and more severely) for the same conduct.

Brief of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL and FACDL) as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner (On Petition for Writ of Certiorari).

Argument: The Sixth Amendment right to counsel demands a strict construction of section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i)’s heightened intent requirement. The reasoning of Caplin & Drysdale and Monsanto is flawed. In those cases, the Court construed the Sixth Amendment as offering no constitutional protection to the payment of counsel of choice with the proceeds of alleged, but not yet proven, criminal conduct. This case represents an ideal vehicle to determine whether the validity of the decisions should be reconsidered, as Justice Kagan, in Luis v. United States, 136 S. Ct.1083, 112 (2016) (Kagan, J., dissenting), suggested might now be appropriate.

Brief of Amicus Curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Support of Reversing Money Laundering Convictions of Appellant, James Michael Farrell

Argument: The use of willful blindness as a substitute for actual knowledge, without an appropriate factual basis, lowers the government’s burden of proof and infringes a defendant’s due process rights. Prosecuting criminal defense attorneys for money laundering under a willful blindness theory threatens clients’ Sixth Amendment rights and creates and ethical conflict for attorney defendants. The use of Section 1956 to prosecute criminal defense lawyers has significant, negative policy implications. Section 1956 should not be used to charge criminal defense lawyers in contravention of Department of Justice policy, robbing them of the protection of an otherwise applicable safe harbor. The requirement of proving concealment under Section 1956 is not a meaningful basis for avoiding the otherwise applicable Section 1957 safe harbor. 

Supreme Court Narrows "Money Laundering" Law -- Washington, DC­ (June 2, 2008) -- In two opinions today, the Supreme Court significantly pared back the reach and scope of the money-laundering statute (18 U.S.C. §1956) and has in the process reinvigorated an old and glorious defense – the rule of lenity.