Читать книгу THE LIFEBOAT STRATEGY - Mark Nestmann - Страница 5

Once up a time, you had to knowingly violate a law in order to be found guilty of violating it. However, legislators have largely eliminated the requirement for “criminal intent” to be found guilty of a criminal offense. It’s no wonder that the United States has the highest per-capita incarceration rate of any country.

How many felonies have you committed today? If you’re like most Americans, you probably violate federal or state law several times each day, without even knowing it.

Just ask Daniel Aversa, who was convicted of money laundering for conspiring with a friend to hide income from his wife. The scheme triggered reports of suspicious transactions in Aversa and his friend’s bank accounts. Essentially, Aversa tried to avoid the requirement to report cash deposits or withdrawals that exceed $10,000 in his bank account from the U.S. Treasury. He didn’t realize that this activity is called “structuring” and is prosecuted under the federal money laundering laws. This law applies even to legally earned, after-tax funds. After sentencing Aversa and a “co-conspirator” to a mandatory prison term, Judge Martin Loughlin wrote:

Defendants should never have been prosecuted for structuring currency transactions... where evidence showed that defendants were not attempting to avoid paying tax on money or disguise where it came from...The evidence shows that [Aversa] did not believe that [he] was breaking any law... There is only one explanation for the bringing of these charges—it was easy.1