“Whether merely hiding funds with no design to create the appearance of legitimate wealth is sufficient to support a money laundering conviction?” Relying on dictionary definitions and legal argument, the petition contends that “as a matter of plain English, to ‘launder’ money ‘is to disguise illegally-obtained money by making it appear legitimate’ ” — in other words, to make “dirty money” look “clean.”

Under the principal federal money laundering law, criminalizing both transactions in or transportation of crime proceeds, it is a violation if the accused individual knows that either activity was “designed in whole or in part….to conceal or disguise” the nature, location, source, ownership or control of those proceeds.

The facts:

in July 2004, when Cuellar was driving toward Mexico, when his car was stopped by a deputy sheriff near Eldorado, Texas. The officer suspected the driver had been drinking. After the car was stopped, and another officer summoned to converse with Cuellar in Spanish, officers noted a bulge in his pocket, and found a roll of $10 and $20 bills; the officers thought they smelled of marijuana. A drug-sniffing dog then alerted to the scent of the currency and to a floorboard in the rear of the car. Inside a compartment there, officers found $83,000 in cash wrapped in duct-taped bundles. He was charged with and convicted of the concealment prong of the international money-laundering law.

For plain English, see the Associated Press report.