Now that eliot spitzer has resigned as New York's governor, federal prosecutors may decide he's been punished enough and hold off on charging him with a crime. But if the feds wanted to, they probably could come after him with a big, fat truncheon—a money laundering charge. Though money laundering is supposed to be the disguising of ill-gotten cash as income from a legitimate business, prosecutors have expanded its meaning to cover almost any financial crime. Laundering charges get tacked onto all sorts of offenses that involve cash, from gambling to Medicare fraud. Laundering charges carry heavy penalties. They're used to extract guilty pleas and sometimes to send defendants to jail for a very long time.
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