Can you go to prison for receiving money and forwarding it

| by Max Soni

Thanks for visiting Spodek Law Group. We’re a second-generation law firm managed by Todd Spodek – with over 40 years of combined experience defending clients in federal cases others won’t touch. You might know us from the Netflix series about Anna Delvey, or from defending the juror in the Ghislaine Maxwell misconduct case, or from handling Alec Baldwin’s stalking case. If you’re here, you already suspect the answer – and you’re worried.

Someone asked you to receive money and send it somewhere else. Maybe you kept a percentage. Maybe they said it was for business, for family overseas, for cryptocurrency trading. Now federal agents are asking questions, or your bank account is frozen, or you got a target letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Can you go to prison for this? Yes. You can go to federal prison – and people do, routinely.

Federal Prison Is the Real Risk Here

In 2025, DOJ prosecuted over 2,300 money mules nationwide – more than triple the previous year’s enforcement numbers. These aren’t hypothetical cases, they’re real people facing years in federal prison right now.

Federal prosecutors call you a “money mule” when you receive funds from fraud victims and forward them to someone else, usually keeping 10-20 percent as a fee. The legal charges are 18 U.S.C. § 1956 (money laundering) and 18 U.S.C. § 1343 (wire fraud). Both carry maximum sentences of 20 years in federal prison.

A woman in Kennett, Missouri got 15 months in prison this May – and she has to pay back $565,000 in restitution. A man in North Carolina who moved $2.8 million through his accounts was sentenced to 60 months in prison, plus three years of supervised release and $10,822 in restitution. In Tampa last November, a 29-year-old money mule got 3 years and 10 months for conspiracy to commit money laundering – even though prosecutors acknowledged he didn’t organize the fraud scheme himself.

Those sentences aren’t outliers, they’re typical.

The Knowledge Problem – and Why “I Didn’t Know” Doesn’t Work

Under 18 U.S.C. § 1956, the government must prove you knew the property involved in the financial transaction represented proceeds of unlawful activity. That’s the statute’s knowledge requirement – and it’s supposed to protect people who genuinely have no idea they’re handling dirty money.

But here’s what federal prosecutors actually do. They don’t need to prove you knew the exact crime. They don’t need to prove you knew who the victims were. They only need to prove you knew something was wrong – that the money came from some form of illegal activity. Willful blindness counts as knowledge under federal law.

Did someone you barely know send you $50,000 to forward overseas? Did they promise you 20 percent just for using your bank account? Were you told not to ask questions? Those facts alone let prosecutors argue you knew, or should have known, the money was dirty.

Federal judges routinely reject “I didn’t know” defenses when the circumstances scream fraud – and the circumstances almost always scream fraud in money mule cases. You might have genuinely believed it was a legitimate business opportunity, you might have been desperate for income, but federal prosecutors don’t care about your intentions. They care about what a reasonable person would have suspected given the facts.

What Federal Prosecutors Actually Charge You With

Money mule cases typically involve multiple federal charges filed together – and each charge carries its own prison sentence that can run consecutively.

Wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 applies if you used electronic communications or wire transfers as part of the scheme. Maximum 20 years. Money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956 applies when you conduct financial transactions involving proceeds of illegal activity with intent to conceal the source, nature, or ownership of those proceeds. Maximum 20 years, plus fines of $500,000 or twice the amount laundered – whichever is greater.

Conspiracy charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h) are common because federal prosecutors love conspiracy charges – they’re easier to prove than the underlying offense and they let prosecutors charge everyone involved in the scheme. Conspiracy to commit money laundering also carries 20 years maximum.

Aggravated identity theft under 18 U.S.C. § 1028A applies if stolen identities were used anywhere in the fraud scheme. That’s a mandatory consecutive 2-year prison sentence on top of everything else – judges have no discretion to reduce it or run it concurrent with other sentences.

The average sentence for money laundering offenses federally is 62 months – over five years. That’s the average across all cases, including those with mitigating factors and cooperation.

Federal Sentencing Guidelines and How They Calculate Your Prison Time

Federal judges use the Sentencing Guidelines under §2S1.1 to calculate recommended prison time for money laundering offenses. The calculation starts with a base offense level determined by the amount of money laundered – and the numbers get serious fast.

If you moved $10,000 to $30,000, that’s a base offense level around 10-12. If you moved $250,000 to $550,000, you’re looking at base offense level 18-20. Over $3.5 million? Base offense level 26 or higher, which translates to 63-78 months in prison before any adjustments.

Enhancements increase your offense level – and your prison time. Were you “in the business” of laundering funds, meaning you did this more than once or advertised your services? Add two levels. Did the scheme involve more than ten victims? Add two levels. Was sophisticated laundering involved, like using shell companies or cryptocurrency mixers? Add two levels.

Your criminal history category matters too. No prior record puts you in Category I, which is the most favorable – but even at Category I, a total offense level of 20 means 33-41 months in prison under the Guidelines. If you have prior convictions, your criminal history category goes up, and so does your prison time.

You can get reductions if you accept responsibility early – that’s typically a 3-level reduction if you plead guilty and don’t make the government go to trial. Federal prosecutors offered that incentive to almost everyone, but you forfeit it if you go to trial and lose.

Substantial assistance departures under 5K1.1 are possible if you cooperate against others involved in the scheme, but that requires you to provide information prosecutors find valuable. You need to give them someone bigger than you – and you need to do it before they’ve already built their case.

Why Prosecutors Are Aggressive About Money Mule Cases in 2025

Federal enforcement against money mules exploded in 2025. The DOJ’s Money Mule Initiative resulted in over 2,300 enforcement actions this year – arrests, charges, account freezures, and warnings.

Federal agencies view money mules as critical infrastructure for fraud schemes targeting elderly Americans, romance scams, business email compromise, and government imposter frauds. Without money mules, criminals overseas can’t access victim funds in U.S. bank accounts. By prosecuting money mules aggressively, DOJ believes they can disrupt entire fraud ecosystems.

That means prosecutors aren’t interested in hearing you were desperate for money, or that you thought it was legitimate, or that you only did it once. They view you as part of the fraud conspiracy – not as a victim who got manipulated.

Recent policy shifts under Attorney General Pamela Bondi in February 2025 directed DOJ resources toward prosecuting transnational criminal organizations, which includes many of the fraud networks that recruit money mules. Federal prosecutors have charging quotas and political pressure to show results against financial crime – and money mule cases are relatively easy to prove compared to tracking down fraud organizers in Nigeria, Romania, or China.

What You Should Do If You’re Already Involved

Stop immediately – don’t receive or forward another dollar. The difference between one transaction and five transactions is the difference between a mitigated sentence and an enhancement for being “in the business” of laundering. Every additional transaction makes your case worse.

Don’t talk to federal agents without a lawyer. The FBI and Secret Service investigators working money mule cases are skilled at getting you to admit knowledge. They’ll tell you cooperation helps – and it might, but only if you have something valuable to trade and you negotiate through counsel before giving a statement. Anything you say without a lawyer can only hurt you.

Preserve records of all communications with whoever recruited you, but don’t delete anything – spoliation of evidence is a separate federal offense. If agents execute a search warrant, don’t resist or obstruct, but don’t answer questions beyond identifying yourself.

Get a federal defense lawyer immediately who handles money laundering cases. This isn’t state court, and the federal system doesn’t have the same plea bargaining flexibility you might expect. Federal prosecutors have immense leverage because the Sentencing Guidelines and mandatory minimums make going to trial extraordinarily risky.

We’ve defended clients in federal money laundering prosecutions where the amounts involved ranged from $30,000 to multiple millions – and the defense strategy changes dramatically based on the facts. Sometimes early cooperation and substantial assistance can reduce sentences from years to months. Sometimes fighting knowledge and intent is the right call because the government’s case has holes. Sometimes negotiating an early guilty plea with acceptance of responsibility gets you the lowest possible Guidelines range.

But you need someone who knows federal sentencing – someone who has handled these cases, someone who understands how prosecutors evaluate cooperation, someone who can negotiate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office before charges are filed if possible.

Federal Prison Is Real – and So Are Your Options

Yes, you can go to prison for receiving money and forwarding it – people do, and the sentences range from probation in rare cases to five years or more when the amounts are large or you recruited others.

Federal prison time isn’t like county jail. You’re looking at Bureau of Prisons facilities far from home, limited contact with family, years of supervised release after you get out, restitution payments that follow you for decades, and a federal felony conviction that destroys employment prospects.

But you’re not convicted yet – and how you respond right now determines everything. We’ve gotten clients out of federal money laundering charges, we’ve negotiated cooperation agreements that resulted in probation instead of prison, we’ve fought cases at trial when the government overreached.

Todd Spodek has defended clients in cases the media called unwinnable. Our firm includes former federal prosecutors who understand exactly how DOJ evaluates these cases – and we represent clients nationwide in federal court.

If you’re facing a federal money mule investigation or charges, call us. We’re available 24/7 because federal cases move fast and your window to cooperate or negotiate closes quickly. The worst thing you can do is wait and hope this goes away – federal prosecutors don’t forget, and the longer you wait, the fewer options you have.