When the startling news broke in May that former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert had been indicted, it seemed to come out of nowhere. The soft-spoken former Speaker had been out of politics since 2007, living a quiet life as a lobbyist.
As you'll recall, Orlando news media was saturated with reports that Hastert had been indicted on suspicion of violating banking laws by illegally structuring withdrawals -- and that he had allegedly lied about the withdrawals to federal authorities. Hard on the heels of that news were revelations that Hastert had been making the withdrawals to pay off a former student who accused the politician of sexual abuse decades earlier.
Hastert has not been charged with any sexual offenses.
Hastert's criminal defense attorney
recently pointed out in federal court that anonymous government leaks to the media about Hastert's
alleged sex crimes have made it nearly impossible for the former Speaker
to ever get a fair trial on the charges of evading currency reporting
laws and lying to the FBI.
The Hastert arrest opened a lot of eyes to the relatively obscure law
that requires banks to report to the IRS any withdrawals or deposits of
$10,000 or more. The laws were designed to prevent money laundering, but
as the Hastert indictment illustrates, can be used by "creative"
prosecutors to go after people withdrawing or depositing legally obtained
funds as well.
Your banking activities involving cash in amounts of $10,000 and up are
reported, regardless of how you obtained the money. In Hastert's case,
he apparently made a number of withdrawals of $50,000 each. The withdrawals
were legal -- it was his money being taken from his account -- but bank
officials
reportedly alerted him to the fact that the withdrawals had to be reported and could draw official
attention. He then apparently made smaller withdrawals, under the $10,000
reporting threshold. Bank officials then reported those activities to
authorities as suspicious.
No matter how he withdrew his own funds from the bank, he apparently drew
attention. The same thing happens to less well-known citizens, of course;
people withdrawing or depositing legally obtained money and inadvertently
gaining the attention of suspicious officials.
Our Orlando, Florida, criminal defense firm is experienced in helping
clients avoid indictment on these types of charges, and also well-versed
in vigorous defense of clients' rights and freedom at trial. You can
find more information about the Law Offices of Horwitz & Citro, P.A., on our
Currency Reporting / Structured Transactionspage.
