We have had an issue raised in a money laundering/cash seizure case that has us scratching our heads, and I'm hoping y'all can help...

Defendant is stopped and consents to a search of his vehicle, which reveals vacuum sealed cash ($9600) that wreaks of marijuana and a harvest log. He says he originated from California, and is heading home for the holidays.

The question is this: if the Defendant "earned the $9600 legally in California" by growing and harvesting marijuana, how can the proceeds he possessed in Texas be considered "proceeds of criminal activity"?

An analogy posed was gambling in Vegas--the gambling wouldn't be legal here in Texas, but if the defendant had won the $9600 by gambling in Nevada, could that money still be seized and the Defendant prosecuted in Texas? Or in order for it to be prosecutable, does the criminal activity have to occur in Texas?

I've read a lot of cases on money laundering (King, Powell, Todd, Deschenes, etc.) but none seem to have ever addressed the question directly. Help!

I am not an attorney, but here are some notes to consider with the vast number of Why?:

1 - Vacuum Sealed Bag with Cash and Harvest Log
Since the $9600 is just under the 10k threshold which banks use as a red flag to file a SAR for possible criminal activity (which is a misnomer since banks now use lower thresholds to track suspicious activities) why is this amount of cash being carried in a vacuum sealed bag? The person has no bank account? The person doesn't trust banks? This is just a large sum of money, with no known expenditure since the defendant said he was carrying it back home to California. So it is not like he was on his way to buy a car, so this is a no-go.

2 - California has not started issuing licenses for commercial growers yet. That is due to start in 2018, I believe. They do issue permits however unless the harvest log can reconcile 6 plants or less to $9600 cash, then this exceeds "personal use" growing. So that is a no-go.

3 - Does he have a permit for growth beyond six plants? If he has a legitimate business, growing for a dispensary, then he must also file such via his income tax returns. You can order 4506 Transcripts to reflect his proper returns. Does he have a transaction or receipt log reflecting the delivery to a known dispensary? Potentially his only saving grace, Otherwise, this is a no-go

4 - If the defendant was traveling for leisure, to a state where marijuana is not legal, then he should have deposited his monies prior to entering the state. Otherwise, you have a large sum of money being transported in a questionable manner, with an odor of a criminal substance, with a log of growing the criminal substance and his only excuse, other than ignorance of Texas Law, is he was traveling home? Again, we all know about "ignorance."

5 - Unless the defendant can produce convincing paperwork to back up his claims of legal harvesting in California, then once he crossed into Texas his luck ran out.......

Just my thoughts.....