Note- cypherpunks: reply by mail, I'm not on the list any longer. Chicago Tribune Monday, November 10, 1997 Money Laundering law netting more small fry. Prosecutors putting new tool to work. A sentencing weapon Congress intended for use against drug lords is being wielded against other defendants. Judges and others say this has diminished legal fairness. By Jan Crawford Greenburg Washington Bureau Washington- Jose Caba considered himself a hardworking, law-abiding man, and immigrant who built a business selling groceries in a poor Brooklyn neighborhood. But when he started illegally redeeming food stamps and depositing the proceeds into a bank account, prosecutors thought otherwise. They accused him of money laundering and sought a harsh sentence. Caba, who thought he was only bending administrative rules, isn't the kind of criminal Congress had in mind when it decided to give prosecutors a weapon to bring down powerful drug lords. Nevertheless, he is one of a growing number of defendants who commit routine fraud and find themselves facing big-time charges of money laundering. [...] More and more prosecutors are invoking [money laundering statutes] in simple fraud, bribery and embezzlement cases, a trend that doesn't sit well with many federal judges or the U.S. Sentencing Commission. In a strongly worded report, the commission... is recommending that the sentences for money laundering be reworked. The penalties are unfair, the commission said, because they often vastly exceed the seriousness of the crime. Caba would have faced 2 to 2 1/2 years in prison for food stamp fraud, but because he deposited the funds in a bank- thereby meeting the definition of laundering the money- he was looking at 10 to 12 years. [...] Nationally, statistics show a marked increase in money laundering cases. In 1995 prosecutors charged 1700 people with money laundering, up from 250 in 1990. More than half of the defendants charged in 1995 were involved in non-drug related crimes. Critics say the charged is used even more than the figures show because prosecutors threaten defendants with the charge to get them to plead guilty to the underlying crime. "It has tremendous implications in the criminal justice system because prosecutors can use it as a tremendous bargaining stick..." said Gordon Greenberg, a defense attorney and an expert on money laundering. "Every single crime, theoretically, can be converted into money laundering because the statute is that broad." What's more, prosecutors in some areas routinely file the charge, while others decline to do so. As a result, "proportionality is lost and appropriate uniformity is lost," said Jonathan Wroblewski, director of legislative and public affairs for the sentencing commission. [] stiff sentences also apply to defendants who make no attempt to cover up their proceeds. Caba laundered money by depositing it into a bank, even though his deposits were by check and he paid taxes on his proceeds. "For all intents and purposes, if you use your ill-gotten gains, it's money laundering." said Alan Chaset, a lawyer who chairs the American Bar Association's committee on sentencing guidelines. "If you take money and put it in a bank and then withdraw it and buy a stick of gum, it's money laundering." Some judges refuse to impose the sentence in cases where there was no elaborate scheme to conceal the money, such as a 1994 case in which prosecutors charged a defendant with money laundering when he put cash from drug sales into a shoe box. [...]