In my foreign land, murder is OKFollow

No, the biggest mistake he made was transferring all the cash around to different accounts, in amounts less than $10,000. He was obviously trying to hide something.

Dramatic language aside (shadow accounts? Really?), this is all stuff an accountant/attorney would have warned them against doing and told them how to do what they were doing legally. Said person would have advised them on how to set up a defense fund such that it was legally separate from their "personal assets". He certainly would have told them *not* to just set up an account to put the money in, and then transfer that money from that account into a second account they own, and then into a relatives account to hold for them. He'd have told them to have the relative create the account in the first place, or have him do it and put it in some sort of trust.

That's why I say that was their biggest mistake. Everything I've heard about this (wild speculations aside) looks like two people who didn't understand that just because they say a given set of money is for a defense fund doesn't legally make it separate from their personal finances. And then shoveling the cash to a third party after the fact is the wrong way to make that money not be personal assets anymore. The issue is the money held in a defense fund. No one has suggested that their own normal private assets were hidden. Had they set up the account properly in the first place, they wouldn't be in any trouble over it.

Which is why I asked about how people normally manage such funds. It's not the existence of money donated by third parties to be used on Zimmerman's behalf, but the way in which said money was handled that is a problem.

Really? What law were they circumventing Joph? I'm honestly curious. The only thing that makes this even remotely legally problematic is that one of them told the judge under oath that they didn't have much personal money. Having the money isn't illegal. Transferring it in smallish amounts isn't illegal. It's not like the money was hidden. The web site and fund was publicly known. People donated money to it. Even the amount collected was known and (I assume) readily available to anyone with a web browser. If their intention was to hide money, they did a pretty crappy job of it.

Lots of people who know nothing about the banking system or finance laws know to transfer funds in amounts less than $10k. Most of them don't know *why* to do that, but pretty much everyone has heard of it. And while it's a method used for transferring money without raising flags, that's not automatically illegal. People do this because it's less hassle to do so that way. Talk to anyone who's worked in a bank. They advise their customers to split up transfers into such amounts as well. It's less hassle for the bank to handle the transactions. You cannot assume any illegality or intent to hide illegality just because someone does that.


As to the statement the wife made? She probably didn't think of the defense fund as their "personal finances" when asked that question. Should she have? Yes. Does it raise questions? Absolutely. But again, it's not like this was money that was hidden in any real way. It's not like she had some expectation that the court would have no way to know that a fund publicly known as their defense fund, that had been talked about on the news prior to that hearing, and for which the amount within was also known to anyone who looked was somehow magically hidden from the court when assessing the amount they had available for them to post bond. Hell. It was a defense fund. She probably assumed they knew about it.

Was it a mistake to not mention it or to verify that the court knew about said fund at the time? Absolutely. Was the intent from the beginning to conceal money? I don't see how. If anything, their lack of proper accounting for that fund is costing them, not helping them in any way. They could have set up that account so that it *didn't* count as personal finances legally. They failed to do so. That's why I say that their biggest mistake was not hiring an accountant to manage it.

Seeing as how they were concealing the source of legally, illegally, and grey area obtained monies, I'm going to go with money laundering. I guess you could say they did it accidentally sixteen times. No, it is a defense. Just not one anyone seriously makes after the sixth grade.

Edited, Jun 19th 2012 9:38pm by lolgaxe

Well, that would be why we have law enforcement and a judicial system.

This would certainly mark them as the first incompetent law breakers in history so I can see how this closes the case.

Edited, Jun 19th 2012 8:58pm by Jophiel

gbaji wrote:

Their biggest mistake here appears to have been not hiring an accountant to manage the money for them.

Well, probably not the biggest. I'd say the biggest is an apparent attempt to purposefully split up a large transaction of money into many less than 10,000 dollar transactions to avoid automated detection by the federal government.

Since when was there another page on this thread? NVM then...

Edited, Jun 19th 2012 11:12pm by TirithRR

Of course. They were clearly outnumbered.

At some point anyone rational would at least consider the possibility that doing something specific sixteen times may be intentional.

I wasn't aware of it, but it's pretty damn obvious they were considering the vast amount of money they received, and that every single transaction was between $9k and just under $10k. If they had had even ONE transaction that was $10K or higher, they might have a leg to stand on. And yeah, it says right there in the damn article that intentionally moving money around in amounts under $10K is illegal. It's considered money laundering.

You might want to re-read that law you linked to.

I'm not sure what law you think Jophiel linked to, but here's the federal law on the subject:



Nothing in there about secrecy. Attempting to avoid triggering an automatic report by financial institutions based on a transaction amount set by the Sec. of Treasury is illegal, whether you openly declare such attempt or not, and regardless of why such attempt took place.

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 4:20pm by BrownDuck

I want to know what episode of Law & Order he was watching when he came up with the "It's only illegal if you're doing something else that's illegal as well" defense.

It's against the law to cause or attempt to cause an institution to fail to report a transaction much the same way it is against the law to exceed the speed limit. The existence of pedestrians, vehicles, man made structures, officers of the law, nor tooth fairies affects the legality of the action.

You're wrong, whether you want to admit it or not.

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 4:37pm by BrownDuck