This was insightful for me:<p>""Congress, initially as part of the War on Drugs but later expanded to include most federal offenses, criminalized almost every financial transaction that flows from funds that are the proceeds of ‘specified unlawful activity,’" Bruce Maloy, an Atlanta-based attorney and an expert in US extradition law, told Ars by e-mail.<p>"In simplest terms, if you possess funds from a crime and do anything with the money other than bury it in the ground or hide it under the mattress, you have committed a new crime. Spending the money is a new crime, opening a bank account is a new crime. These expenditures do not have to be in furtherance of the original crime, but my recollection is that here it alleged that they are. In short, throwing in a money laundering allegation is quite common in US federal indictments."<p>Page Pate, another Atlanta-based defense lawyer who has also worked on international extradition cases, agreed. "It's almost automatic to add money laundering charges to any offense whether it's drug-related or not," he said. "I haven't seen it that often in criminal copyright cases. The US has been very aggressive in adding money laundering and forfeiture in criminal cases.""<p>Ain't it great, War on Drugs?