Money Laundering and Racketeering

     The FBI is looking for a way to charge me with money laundering and racketeering.  Such strong allegations used to be reserved for mafiosa types, the big wheeler-dealers.  But my lawyers tell me that  every fraud investigation against a physician nowadays includes charges of money laundering and racketeering.
    What do these terms mean?  The online dictionary, Investipedia, gives these definitions:
     Money laundering:  The process of creating the appearance that large amounts of money obtained from serious crimes, such as drug trafficking or terrorist activity, originated from a legitimate source.
     Racketeering:  An organized conspiracy to commit extortion.  The illegal activity inherent to organized crime, committed with the protection and advancement of the organized crime "business" in mind.
     I am a physician who is being investigated (unjustly) for fraud (probably), under statutes created to prosecute criminals who engage in money laundering and racketeering.  These statutes were not introduced for the purpose of "catching" solo doctors, or any doctors.  They are being misapplied.
     Another way to think about money laundering is to imagine a person with a legitimate job generating criminal income on the side.  He deposits money from both sources into a single bank account.  The admixture of money from both a regular job and criminal activity constitutes money laundering.  The government assumes that the person's intent in using only one bank account is to confuse law enforcement officials by making criminal income look like regular income.
     Here are ways to avoid charges of money laundering:
          1.  Don't do anything criminal if it generates income.
          2.  If you collect money from criminal activities, keep a separate bank account for the funds so the government won't get confused.  FBI officials need to be able to disentangle the money you earned legitimately from what you earned criminally.  Why make it hard for them?
          3.  Don't earn any money as a physician--every bit is subject to forfeiture by the federal government on grounds of fraud, because the catchment definition for "medical fraud" allows no one to escape, not once the government decides to investigate.  Then charges of money laundering follow automatically.
          4.  Give up the idea of practicing medicine altogether.  If you're thinking about going to medical school, choose another profession.  If you are a physician already, change careers.  If you are a solo doctor, shut down your business today.  Do you remember when doctors were abandoning medicine and selling Amway?   It's still possible.
     Racketeering is slightly different.  It refers to crimes focused on making money--lots of it.  Racketeers often keep up a front, like that Los Pollos guy on Breaking Bad--he maintained a fast-food chicken joint as a frontispiece, and had a methamphetamine factory hidden in the cellar.  Or, remember those movie scenes where there's a nice Italian restaurant facing the street--and a smoky, grimy, gambling joint behind a door in the back room?
     I wonder what I've been doing behind the scenes, to have triggered FBI charges of racketeering?  Whatever it is...I wish it were the Italian restaurant, instead.  I could use a steady supply of calamari and stuffed eggplant--it would save a lot of time cooking.
     Here are ways to avoid charges of racketeering:
          1.  Keep your vast criminal earnings well-hidden.  Consider conducting business in a country with a feudal government that's willing to give you immunity from punishment in exchange for a regular stream of cash.  Wait--that could be this country!  But you'll have to be an FDA-approved pharmaceutical company, making donations to political campaigns, to get the benefits.
          2.  Make sure no one who knows about your back-room business leaks the information to government agents.  This is why mafia types have such high turnover.  You can't trust anyone.  Even people you've looked after for years might rat on you if the government gives them an incentive.
          3.  Don't go into the medical field.  Doctors seem to be getting caught for racketeering all the time.  They must be a lot smarter than they look when it comes to organized crime, because the FBI is nabbing them in droves.  If you insist on collecting large sums from the medical world, forget about doing it with a legitimate front like a clinic--that's a waste of time, anyway.  Just bill Medicare with fake ID's a few million at a time, and dart all over the country doing it.  In a few years you'll have the cash to put together the gambling ring you've always wanted.