Money Laundering Conviction Valid Despite Commingled Funds

The money laundering conviction for a defendant who allegedly used a Ponzi scheme to bilk $9 million from elderly investors was valid, the Sixth Circuit said.

Raymond Erker said that he couldn’t be convicted for money laundering because the statute required the government to show that the funds he used were “criminally derived” and he took them out of an account that also had his own personal funds. Applying trust law, Judge Amul R. Thapar rejected the argument.

Thapar’s analysis looked at two trust theories. The intermediate balance approach assumes that the beneficiary’s money stays in the commingled account until ...