Criminal Defense Lawyers

Restaurant Owner Money Laundering: Federal Defense When FBI Raids Your Business

When the FBI Raids Your Restaurant: What’s Actually Happening

The FBI showed up at your restaurant at 6 AM with a search warrant. Their seizing your computers, financial records, and asking you’re employees questions. The warrant says “money laundering investigation.” Your thinking this has to be a mistake—you run a legitimate restaurant. But teh agents are treating you like a criminal, and your whole world is collapsing. Maybe it was the PPP loan you got during COVID. Maybe its the cash deposits. Maybe someone told them something that ain’t even true.

This article explains what’s actually happening, why restaurant owners are being targeted in 2025, what the federal charges really mean, your three realistic options, and what you need to do in the next 72 hours before its to late.

Why This Is Happening to You Right Now

Look, here’s the deal. Your not being targeted because of bad luck. Restaurant owners are facing a massive federal enforcement surge in 2025, and you need to understand why this is happening right now. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued guidance in 2024 that specifically flagged restaurants as high-risk businesses for money laundering. The government thinks restaurants are perfect for three specific schemes: inflating revenue with dirty cash, paying employees off-books with illegal proceeds, and using multiple bank accounts across locations to fragment transactions.

The recent cases prove this ain’t slowing down. Bryan Ochoa Diaz, a restaurant owner in Oregon, pled guilty in September 2025 to laundering COVID-19 relief funds through his restaurant. Just last month—November 20, 2025—federal prosecutors in Minnesota charged their 77th defendant in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. That’s 77 people charged in a single investigation involving restaurants and food service businesses. In July 2025, Cesar Campos-Reyes, who owned Mexican restaurants in Alabama, was indicted on bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering charges related to $225,000 in PPP loans. When ICE raided his restaurants, they detained 40 employees.

Here’s what most restaurant owners don’t realize: its not just one agency investigating you. The feds use what I call the “triple threat” coordination. ICE shows up first because of employment issues—maybe your hiring workers without papers, maybe its labor violations. That raid uncovers financial irregularities. Then the IRS Criminal Investigation division gets involved because of potential tax evasion or payroll tax fraud. And then—this is where it gets serious—the FBI steps in to prosecute money laundering charges. Each agency feeds information to the others. So when you think your just dealing with an immigration audit, your actually triggering a coordinated federal financial crimes investigation.

The COVID-19 relief fraud cases are creating most of the new prosecutions. Irregardless of whether you actually committed fraud, if you recieved PPP or EIDL loans and there’s ANY question about how you used those funds, prosecutors are looking at money laundering charges for what you did with the money after you got it. Depositing PPP funds? That could be charged as laundering. Transferring them between accounts? Laundering. Using them to pay employees or rent when the goverment thinks you wasn’t eligible for the loan in the first place? Money laundering.

What “Money Laundering” Actually Means for Restaurant Owners

You probly think money laundering is something drug dealers and mobsters do. Your wrong. Under federal law—18 USC § 1956—money laundering just requires three elements: (1) a financial transaction, (2) involving proceeds of “specified unlawful activity,” and (3) with intent to conceal, disguise, or promote the illegal activity. That’s it. Notice what’s NOT required: huge amounts of money, organized crime connections, or even knowing exactly where the money came from.

Here’s the scenarios that get restaurant owners charged. If you got a PPP loan through fraud—even if you didn’t think it was fraud at the time—and then you deposited that money into your business account, that deposit is a seperate money laundering charge. The underlying crime is the PPP fraud (obtaining money through false statements to a bank). The money laundering is what you did with the money afterwards. Same thing with employment tax evasion. If your not paying proper payroll taxes and then you use that untaxed money to pay employees in cash, prosecutors call that laundering the proceeds of tax fraud. Or if someone gives you cash that came from drug sales or other crimes, and you run it through your restaurant by inflating the revenue on your books, thats classic money laundering even if you wasn’t involved in the original drug dealing.

But here’s the thing that’s gonna make you angry: normal restaurant operations look identical to money laundering. Think about it. You make large cash deposits because you run a cash business. You have multiple bank accounts because you have multiple locations or you seperate payroll from operations. You transfer money between accounts to cover expenses at different restaurants. You pay some vendors in cash because thats how they want it. Every single one of these legitimate business practices looks like “concealment” or “structuring” to federal prosecutors.

And here’s the trap that catches innocent restaurant owners: the $10,000 reporting threshold. You probly know that banks have to file a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) for any cash deposit over $10,000. So you think your being smart by keeping deposits under that amount. Maybe you deposit $9,500 on Monday, another $9,200 on Wednesday, and $8,800 on Friday instead of depositing $27,500 all at once. Congratulations—you just committed structuring, which is itself a federal crime under 31 USC § 5324. The crime isn’t having $27,500 in cash. The crime is deliberately breaking it into smaller deposits to avoid the CTR. And the penalty? Up to 5 years in federal prison per transaction. So those three deposits could be three seperate felony counts.

The government doesn’t even have to prove you knew the money came from a crime. They use something called the “willful blindness doctrine.” If you deliberately avoided learning where the money came from—if you didn’t ask questions when someone handed you a suitcase full of cash, or if you accepted payments that didn’t match any legitimate business transaction—the law treats you as if you knew it was dirty money. Courts have ruled that willful blindness is the same as actual knowledge. So “I didn’t know” ain’t a defense if the evidence shows you should of known and purposely looked the other way.

The Charges Your Actually Facing (And Why They Say 60 Years)

When the prosecutor tells you your facing 60 or 80 years in federal prison for what seems like a business dispute, your first reaction is disbelief. That can’t be right. But here’s what their doing: charge stacking. Their charging you with both the underlying fraud AND seperate money laundering counts for the same conduct. This dual-track prosecution strategy is how they create the massive sentence exposure that forces you to plead guilty.

Let me break down the actual statutes. Money laundering under 18 USC § 1956 carries up to 20 years per count. Wire fraud—which applies if you sent any emails or made any phone calls related to the scheme—is another 20 years per count. Bank fraud, which is what they charge in PPP cases, is 30 years per count. And structuring those cash deposits? 5 years per count, and remember each deposit is a seperate count.

The Campos-Reyes case from Alabama shows how this works in practice. He was charged with 4 counts of bank fraud (that’s 120 years maximum), plus 4 counts of wire fraud (80 years), plus 1 count of money laundering (20 years). The total? 220 years maximum exposure for a $225,000 PPP scheme. Now, nobody actually gets 220 years. But that’s not the point. The point is the prosecutor can walk into a room and say “you’re facing life in prison unless you cooperate or plead guilty to what we offer.”

Here’s what the actual sentences look like based off recent cases and federal sentencing guidelines. If you cooperate with the government—meaning you provide substantial assistance, testify against co-conspirators, and help them prosecute other people—your looking at 2 to 7 years. If you plead guilty without cooperating but accept responsibility, expect 8 to 12 years. If you go to trial and lose, which happens in 95% of federal cases, your probably getting 15 to 20 years. The difference between cooperating and going to trial is literally the difference between getting out while your still young enough to rebuild you’re life versus spending the best years of your life in federal prison.

You might be wondering why this is federal and not state charges. Here’s the thing: almost every financial crime becomes federal if it involves any of these elements: interstate wire transfers (which happens every time you use email or your credit card processor), federally-insured bank accounts (which is basically every bank), amounts over $10,000, or use of U.S. mail. Since restaurants use banks and wire transfers every single day, any financial crime automatically falls under federal jurisdiction. State prosecutors defer to federal prosecutors on money laundering cases because the feds have better resources and harsher penalties.

And then there’s asset forfeiture. The goverment can seize 100% of the laundered proceeds, plus any property used to “facilitate” the crime. That means your restaurant itself, your vehicles, you’re bank accounts—everything. They don’t need a conviction. Civil forfeiture works on “probable cause,” which is a way lower standard than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” So they can take everything you own before you even go to trial.

What Happens in the Next 72 Hours (Critical Actions You Must Take NOW)

Okay, real talk. The next 72 hours are gonna determine wether you survive this or lose everything. I’ve saw restaurant owners make decisions in the first three days that destroyed there case before they even hired a attorney. So listen carefully.

HOUR 1-24: What You Absolutely Cannot Do

DO NOT talk to federal agents without an attorney present. I don’t care how friendly they seem. I don’t care if they say “we just want to hear you’re side of the story” or “this is your chance to clear things up.” Its a trap. Anything you say will be used against you. Any inconsistency—even if your just confused or missremembering—becomes “lying to federal agents,” which is a seperate felony under 18 USC § 1001 that carries 5 years. You have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Use it. Tell them “I want to speak with my attorney before answering any questions.” Then stop talking.

DO NOT destroy any documents, delete any files, or “clean up” your records. Obstruction of justice under 18 USC § 1519 carries 20 years in federal prison. Even if the documents seem harmful to your case, destroying them is worse. The government will assume—and a jury will believe—that you destroyed the most incriminating evidence. Plus, your IT guy can’t really delete things permanently anyway. Forensic specialists recover “deleted” files all the time. And when they do, you’ve added an obstruction charge on top of everything else.

DO NOT transfer money, hide assets, or move things around. This proves “consciousness of guilt”—it shows you knew you did something wrong. It also creates new money laundering counts. Every transfer is potentially a seperate transaction designed to conceal funds. And if there’s already a restraining order on your assets (which often happens immediately), violating it means your getting arrested and detained without bail.

DO NOT use cryptocurrency to move or hide money. This is critical. Some restaurant owners think Bitcoin or other crypto is a way to get there money “off the grid.” Wrong. The DOJ created a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team in 2023 specifically to prosecute crypto money laundering. Bitcoin ATMs require reporting for transactions over $10,000 as of 2024. Every crypto transaction is recorded permanently on the blockchain—its literally a public ledger that never goes away. Prosecutors use blockchain analysis experts to trace every transaction. And here’s the worst part: using cryptocurrency is treated as evidence of “sophisticated concealment,” which means enhanced penalties. You think your hiding money but your actually creating permanent evidence of money laundering with aggravating factors. If you’ve been using crypto, stop immediantly.

DO NOT contact employees to “get your story straight” or tell them what to say. That’s witness tampering under 18 USC § 1512, another seperate felony. Federal agents tap phones. They record conversations. They interview employees seperately and compare stories. When the stories match too perfectly, they know someone coordinated it. Plus, your employees are probably already cooperating—agents offer them immunity in exchange for testimony against you.

HOUR 24-48: What You Need to Do Immediantly

Hire a federal criminal defense attorney. Not a state criminal lawyer. Not your business attorney who did your LLC paperwork. Not your cousin who handles real estate closings. You need someone who practices in federal court and has experiance with money laundering cases. This matters because federal sentencing guidelines, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the strategies for dealing with FBI and DOJ prosecutors are completely different then state court.

File an emergency motion to unfreeze your bank accounts. When the government seizes your accounts based off a money laundering investigation, your business can’t operate. You can’t make payroll, pay rent, or keep the lights on. But there are emergency procedures to get limited access to funds for legitimate business expenses. Your attorney needs to file this within days, not weeks. The longer you wait, the more the goverment argues that the business was never legitimate in the first place.

Invoke your Fifth Amendment rights in writing to all federal agents. Your attorney will send a letter to the FBI, IRS, and any other agency saying you won’t be answering questions without counsel present. This stops them from showing up at your house or business trying to talk to you. It also creates a record that you asserted your rights properly.

Preserve all financial records before the government seizes them. Make copies of everything—bank statements, transaction records, vendor invoices, payroll records, tax returns. You need these to reconstruct what actually happened. Once the government takes the originals, it can take months to get copies through discovery. And some records might “disappear” or be deemed “irrelevant” by prosecutors. Your gonna need these records to build your defense or to show prosecutors your transactions were legitimate if you cooperate.

HOUR 48-72: Critical Strategic Decisions

This is when you and your attorney assess wether to pursue pre-indictment cooperation. Here’s the hard truth: if your gonna cooperate with prosecutors, the time to do it is before they indict you. Once charges are filed, your cooperation value drops by 80%. Pre-indictment cooperation might mean no charges get filed at all, or massively reduced charges. But it requires you to proffer—to sit down with prosecutors and tell them everything. And if they don’t believe you or don’t think your information is valuable enough, anything you said in the proffer can be used against you (with some limitations).

Your attorney needs to calculate your sentencing guideline range based off the likely charges. This involves looking at the base offense level for money laundering, enhancements for amount of money involved, role in the offense, and whether you accept responsibility. A 20-year maximum doesn’t mean you’ll get 20 years—the guidelines will probably put you in the 6-12 year range depending on the facts. But if you cooperate, you can get a 5K1.1 departure that cuts that in half or more. These calculations determine whether cooperation makes sense.

Figure out the asset forfeiture exposure. What can the goverment actually take? Your restaurant building if you own it? Your house if its jointly owned with your spouse? Your cars, boats, investment accounts? There’s something called the “innocent owner defense” that sometimes protects family members who weren’t involved in the crime. But you need to assert it early and properly. Every day you wait is another day the goverment is building its forfeiture case.

Get seperate attorneys for your employees who might be witnesses. This is crucial. If your employees are testifying against you, they can’t use your attorney—that’s a conflict of interest. But if their not cooperating yet, you might want to pay for there attorneys to keep them from flipping. However, if you pay for there lawyers, prosecutors will argue your trying to control there testimony. Its a delicate situation that requires careful strategy. The point is: employees need lawyers fast, because agents are interviewing them right now without counsel.

Bottom line—and I mean this—these 72 hours determine everything. Restaurant owners who act fast sometimes avoid charges entirely. Those who wait end up with frozen accounts, cooperating employees, and maxed-out charges. The cooperation window is closing while your reading this.

Your Three Realistic Options (And What Each One Actually Means)

You’ve got three choices, and only three. Each one leads to a very different outcome. Your attorney should be explaining this, but here’s what each option really looks like based off recent cases.

Option 1: Pre-Indictment Cooperation

This means you approach prosecutors before their ready to indict and offer to provide “substantial assistance.” You’ll do a proffer session where you tell them everything—who gave you the money, how the scheme worked, what other people were involved. If they think your information is valuable, you might help them prosecute higher-level targets or uncover additional crimes. In exchange, they either don’t file charges at all, or they file reduced charges with a sentencing agreement.

The benefit is enormous: a case that would of gotten you 20 years might result in 2 to 3 years, or even probation in rare cases. Bryan Ochoa Diaz, the Oregon restaurant owner who pled guilty in September 2025, probably got a cooperation deal—he pled guilty early, which suggests he’s working with prosecutors against whoever gave him the COVID funds to launder. But there’s risks. If prosecutors don’t think your cooperation is valuable enough, they can still use what you told them against you (though not directly as testimony—its complicated). And you might have to testify in other trials, which can take years and puts you in a difficult position.

The critical thing about cooperation is timing. It has to happen NOW, before indictment. Once your indicted, your cooperation is worth maybe 30-40% of what it was worth before. Prosecutors have less incentive to deal with you because they’ve already committed resources to the case. So if your gonna cooperate, the window is the next few weeks at most.

Option 2: Plea Agreement Without Cooperation

This is kinda like the middle path. You plead guilty to reduced charges, accept responsibility (which gets you a 2-3 level reduction in the sentencing guidelines), but you don’t provide information about other people. Maybe you don’t have information to give. Maybe you don’t want to be a witness. Maybe the cooperation option ain’t available because the goverment doesn’t need your testimony.

The benefit is you avoid trial risk and you get some sentence reduction for accepting responsibility. Your probably looking at 8 to 12 years depending on the amount of money involved. That’s way better then the 15 to 20 you’d get if you went to trial and lost. But its nowhere near the 2 to 3 years you could get with cooperation. This option makes sense if the evidence against you is overwhelming, you don’t have valuable cooperation to offer, and you just want certainty about what sentence your getting.

Option 3: Go to Trial

Fighting the charges means asserting one or more defenses: (1) the money didn’t come from illegal activity (“source of funds” defense), (2) you didn’t know the money was from illegal activity (though willful blindness defeats this), (3) your transactions had legitimate business purposes (not designed to conceal), or (4) the government can’t prove the elements beyond a reasonable doubt.

The benefit of trial is obvious: if you win, you walk away with no conviction. Your free. The risk is equally obvious: federal conviction rate is 95% or higher. Money laundering cases have high conviction rates because their easy to prove—prosecutors just need bank records showing transactions, evidence of the underlying crime, and proof you knew or should of known the money was dirty. If you lose at trial, your facing maximum exposure because you don’t get credit for accepting responsibility and you don’t get the cooperation departure. So that 8-year plea offer becomes 18 years at sentencing.

Trial makes sense in a few situations: the evidence is weak, you have a strong legitimate business purpose defense, you can’t live with being a cooperator for personal or safety reasons, or the plea offer is so bad that trial can’t make it much worse. But you need to understand the odds. This ain’t like state court where maybe 50-60% of cases go to trial. In federal court, only about 3% of cases go to trial because the conviction rate is so high and the trial penalty is so severe.

How to Choose

Your attorney should be evaluating: (1) How strong is the evidence? Do they have bank records, witness testimony, recorded calls? (2) Do you actually know where the money came from and can you provide valuable information to prosecutors? (3) What’s your criminal history? First-time offenders get better deals. (4) What’s your family situation? If you have young kids, spending 3 years away is very different then spending 15 years. (5) Can you live with the consequences of each choice? Some people can’t psychologically handle being a cooperator. Some people can’t handle spending decades in prison. There’s no right answer, but their is a strategic answer based off the specific facts of your case.

How These Cases Are Actually Defended (When Trial Is the Right Choice)

If your going to trial, here’s the defenses that actually work in restaurant money laundering cases. I’m not saying they always work—remember, the conviction rate is 95%. But these are the arguments that give you a fighting chance.

Source of Funds Defense

The goverment has to prove the money came from “specified unlawful activity”—things like drug dealing, fraud, tax evasion, embezzlement. If you can show the source was legitimate, there’s no money laundering. For example, maybe you recieved a $100,000 cash investment from a family member who sold property overseas. The government will claim its drug money. You need to prove it was a legitimate real estate transaction—you’ll need deeds, sale records, proof of the family member’s ownership, wire transfer records showing the legitimate source. A forensic accountant traces the funds backwards to establish they came from lawful activity.

This defense works best when you’ve got documentation. If someone handed you cash with no records, no paperwork, no explanation of where it came from, and you just deposited it without asking questions—your gonna have a hard time proving it was legitimate. But if you’ve got a paper trail showing legitimate business loans, investor agreements, or documented sales, you can beat the charge.

Legitimate Business Purpose Defense

This is basically the defense for that bootstrap problem I mentioned earlier. Your transactions look like money laundering, but they were actually normal restaurant operations. You have multiple bank accounts because you have multiple locations and you need seperate payroll accounts for each. You make frequent transfers between accounts because your moving money to cover shortfalls at different restaurants. You deposit cash in amounts under $10,000 because thats how much cash you generate on a given day—not because your trying to avoid CTR reporting.

To prove this, you need a forensic accountant who can reconstruct your entire cash flow and show that transaction patterns match documented revenue. If you grossed $8,000 in cash on Tuesday and deposited $8,000 on Wednesday, that’s legitimate. If you grossed $25,000 but made three deposits of $8,000 each over three days, that looks like structuring. The accountant analyzes point-of-sale records, cash register tapes, credit card transaction reports, vendor invoices, and compares them to deposit patterns. If it all matches, you can show the transactions weren’t designed to conceal anything—they were just business operations.

You’ll also want an industry expert who can testify that your practices are standard for the restaurant industry. Multiple accounts? Normal. Cash-heavy business? Normal for certain types of restaurants. The expert explains to the jury that the government is sort of criminalizing ordinary business practices.

Lack of Knowledge Defense

Money laundering requires you to know (or be willfully blind to the fact) that the money came from illegal activity. If someone gave you money and told you it was from a legitimate business venture, and you had no reason to think otherwise, you might not have the required intent. The problem is the willful blindness doctrine. If the circumstances were so suspicious that any reasonable person would of asked questions, and you deliberately didn’t ask because you didn’t want to know the answer, the court treats you as having knowledge.

Examples of behavior that proves willful blindness: accepting suitcases full of cash with no explanation, keeping two sets of books (one real, one fake), accepting payment amounts that don’t match any invoice or business transaction, being told explicitly by someone that the money was from drugs or fraud and doing the transaction anyway. If any of these apply, the knowledge defense fails.

But if you can show you asked appropriate questions, kept proper records, reported everything to your accountant, and had legitimate reasons to believe the source was lawful, you might establish lack of knowledge. Its a tough defense, but it works in cases where the evidence of knowledge is weak.

Insufficient Evidence of Concealment

The government has to prove the transaction was designed to conceal or disguise the nature, source, or ownership of the funds. Using a business bank account isn’t concealment. Reporting the income on your tax return isn’t concealment. Keeping normal business records isn’t concealment. If you can show you were operating openly, paying taxes, maintaining records, and not doing anything to hide the transactions, the concealment element might fail.

This defense works best when your accused of laundering money through the restaurant but you actually reported all the revenue, paid taxes on it, and kept detailed records showing where every dollar came from and where it went. The government will argue that using the restaurant itself is the concealment mechanism (you inflated revenue to hide the illegal source). But if your books accurately reflect what actually happened, that argument gets weaker.

What You Need to Win at Trial

Forensic accountant to reconstruct all transactions and show they match legitimate business patterns. Industry expert to testify about normal restaurant operations. Banking expert to explain that your account structure was appropriate. A excellent federal criminal defense attorney who knows how to cross-examine FBI agents and IRS investigators. And access to all the government’s evidence through discovery—the SAR reports (Suspicious Activity Reports) that banks filed about you, CTR records, bank account statements, witness interview reports, any recorded calls or emails.

One more thing: alot of money laundering cases have weak points in the chain of evidence. Maybe the government can’t actually prove where the money originated. Maybe the witness who claimed it was drug money is unreliable or has credibility issues. Maybe there were legitimate explanations that the investigators didn’t fully explore because they was focused on building the prosecution’s theory. A good attorney finds these gaps and exploits them. But you need someone with experience in federal financial crimes to spot the weaknesses.

The Mistakes That Destroy Your Case

I’ve seen restaurant owners turn a defensible case into a guaranteed conviction by making these mistakes.

Talking to Federal Agents Without Your Attorney

The agents seem nice. They say their just trying to understand what happened. They act like if you just explain everything, this will all go away. Its all an act. FBI agents are trained in interrogation techniques designed to get you to talk. They’re not looking to exonerate you—their looking for evidence to convict you. Anything you say can and will be twisted to fit there theory of the case. Any tiny inconsistency becomes “lying to federal agents,” which is a seperate 5-year felony. Your trying to help yourself but your actually confessing to crimes you might not of even committed.

And here’s the thing: you can’t talk your way out of this. If the government has enough evidence to raid your restaurant or question you, they’ve already built there case. Your explanation isn’t gonna change there mind. The only thing talking does is give them more evidence. Invoke your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and let your attorney handle all communication. Period.

Destroying Documents or Evidence

You think: “These financial records make me look guilty, so I’ll just shred them.” Wrong. Obstruction of justice under 18 USC § 1519 carries up to 20 years in federal prison. Even if the documents actually were incriminating, destroying them is worse. The goverment will tell the jury: “He destroyed the evidence because it proved his guilt. Innocent people don’t destroy evidence.” And the jury will beleive it.

Plus, in this digital age, nothing is ever really deleted. Your IT person can’t permanently erase files. Forensic computer experts recover “deleted” data all the time. When they do, you’ve got the worst of both worlds: the damaging evidence still exists, AND you’ve got an obstruction charge proving consciousness of guilt.

Even if you think documents are harmful, don’t destroy them. Let your attorney review everything and determine what’s actually problematic and what can be explained. Sometimes things that look bad have innocent explanations once you understand the context.

Transferring or Hiding Assets

Your worried the government will seize everything, so you start moving money to offshore accounts, putting property in your spouse’s name, or giving assets to family members. This is a disaster. First, it proves consciousness of guilt—it shows you knew you did something wrong. Second, it creates new money laundering counts. Each transfer is potentially a seperate financial transaction designed to conceal assets. Third, if there’s already a restraining order on your assets (which is common in money laundering investigations), violating it means your getting arrested immediantly and held without bail. Fourth, your probably doing this while under surveillance. Agents watch where the money goes. Your not hiding anything—your creating video and documentary evidence of additional crimes.

Don’t move money. Don’t transfer property. Don’t hide assets. Work with your attorney on legitimate asset protection strategies that don’t constitute additional crimes.

Using Cryptocurrency

Some restaurant owners think Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency is a way to get money “off the grid” where the goverment can’t track it. This is 100% wrong and will make your case catastrophically worse. The Department of Justice created a National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team in 2023 specifically focused on crypto money laundering. Bitcoin ATMs now require reporting for transactions over $10,000. Every cryptocurrency transaction is recorded permanently on the blockchain, which is a public ledger that never disappears. Blockchain analysis companies work with the FBI to trace every transaction from wallet to wallet. Prosecutors use this evidence to prove money laundering with “sophisticated concealment,” which triggers enhanced penalties.

You think your hiding money, but your actually creating a permanent, traceable record of money laundering with aggravating factors. Cryptocurrency exchanges (like Coinbase, Kraken, etc.) fully comply with federal subpoenas. Their not protecting you. If you’ve already used crypto, stop immediantly and disclose it to your attorney. Don’t make it worse.

Contacting Employees to Coordinate Stories

You think: “I need to make sure my employees tell the agents the same story I’m gonna tell.” This is witness tampering under 18 USC § 1512, a seperate federal felony. Federal agents tap phones. They record conversations. They interview employees seperately and compare the stories. When stories match too perfectly—using the exact same phrases, mentioning the exact same details in the exact same order—agents know someone coordinated it. Plus, your employees are probably already cooperating. Agents offer them immunity deals in exchange for testimony against you. The employee who you thought was loyal has already told the FBI everything.

Do not contact employees about the investigation. Do not suggest what they should say. Do not ask them what they told the agents. Any communication about the investigation is gonna be characterized as witness tampering. Let employees get there own attorneys and make there own decisions.

Fleeing or Missing Court Appearances

If your thinking about running—don’t. Fleeing makes everything worse. You’ll be arrested on a federal warrant, detained without bail, and charged with obstruction. Any cooperation value you might of had is gone. Asset forfeiture becomes automatic. And your proving to everyone that you knew you were guilty. If your released on bond and you miss a court appearance, the bond is revoked and you’ll be held in custody until trial. Just don’t.

Posting on Social Media

Your angry, scared, and you want to defend yourself publicly. You post on Facebook about how the charges are unfair, or how your innocent. Don’t. Prosecutors screenshot every social media post and use it as evidence. Photos showing you with expensive cars or jewelry? Evidence of proceeds from money laundering. Posts claiming innocence that contradict what you later say in court? Consciousness of guilt when the story changes. Posts about your business revenue? Evidence of how much money you were processing. Even posts you think are private get subpoenaed. Your Facebook “friends” might be cooperating with the government.

Don’t delete your social media accounts—that’s destruction of evidence. But don’t post anything new. Just go silent.

What You Need to Do Right Now

If your a restaurant owner under federal investigation for money laundering, or if you’ve already been charged, the next 24 hours matter more then anything else.

Contact a federal criminal defense attorney immediatly. Not tommorrow. Not next week. Today. The attorney needs to be someone who practices in federal court regularly and has handled money laundering cases. Ask them: How many federal money laundering cases have you handled? What were the outcomes? Do you have experiance with pre-indictment cooperation negotiations? Do you know the prosecutors in the local US Attorney’s office? The answers will tell you if their the right attorney for this.

Stop talking to anyone about the investigation except your attorney. Federal agents, your employees, your family members, your accountant—nobody gets information about the case except your lawyer. Anything you say to anyone other then your attorney can be used against you. Attorney-client communications are privileged. Everything else is fair game.

Preserve all financial records and documentation. Make copies of everything—bank statements, deposit slips, transaction records, vendor invoices, employee payroll records, tax returns for the past 5 years, loan documents, anything financial. You need this to defend yourself or to cooperate effectively. Once the government seizes the originals, it could take months to get copies through discovery.

Do not make any financial transactions that could be characterized as suspicious. Don’t move money between accounts. Don’t make large withdrawals. Don’t pay off debts with cash. Don’t buy or sell property. Any transaction right now will be scrutinized as potential evidence of concealment or flight.

Assess your cooperation options with your attorney. Is pre-indictment cooperation possible? Do you have valuable information the goverment wants? What’s the cooperation window—how much time before they indict? What are the risks and benefits of proffer sessions? Your attorney should be evaluating whether cooperation could reduce a 20-year exposure to 2-3 years, and whether its worth the risks.

Understand the asset forfeiture exposure and take immediate steps to protect family assets. What accounts are at risk? Can your spouse assert an innocent owner defense? Are there legitimate ways to protect your home, retirement accounts, or children’s education funds? This needs to happen fast because the government is already identifying assets for seizure.

Every day you wait is another day of employees being interviewed without counsel, financial records being analyzed by FBI forensic accountants, bank accounts being frozen, and your cooperation value decreasing.

Your facing this alone right now, but you don’t have to. Federal criminal defense attorneys handle restaurant owner money laundering cases regularly and know how to protect you from prosecutors who are trying to make an example out of you. The difference between acting in the next 24 hours and waiting a week could literally be the difference between 3 years and 20 years in federal prison. Get help now.