Case: 18-30684 Document: 00515608112 Page: 1 Date Filed: 10/20/2020 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED October 20, 2020 No. 18-30684 Lyle W. Cayce Clerk Roberto Beras, Petitioner—Appellant, versus Calvin Johnson, Warden, Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution, Respondent—Appellee. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana USDC No. 2:17-CV-276 Before Wiener, Engelhardt, and Oldham, Circuit Judges. Per Curiam: Roberto Beras is a federal prisoner. He sought postconviction review of his conviction for money laundering. But he did not do it the normal way— through a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Instead, Beras filed a § 2241 petition for habeas corpus, relying on our precedent in Reyes-Requena v. United States, 243 F.3d 893 (5th Cir. 2001). We hold the petition is an abuse of the writ. Case: 18-30684 Document: 00515608112 Page: 2 Date Filed: 10/20/2020 No. 18-30684 I. A. Roberto Beras was the co-owner and vice president of Dinero Express, Inc., which specialized in international money transfers. United States v. Dinero Exp., Inc., 313 F.3d 803, 805 (2d Cir. 2002) (“Dinero I”). The Government filed an eighty-two-count indictment, alleging that Beras used Dinero to facilitate “an extensive international money laundering scheme” involving New York-area drug traffickers and “the proceeds of illegal narcotics sales.” Id. As relevant here, the Government charged Beras in Counts 3 through 35 with money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(B)(i) and in Count 1 with conspiracy to commit money laundering. Section 1956(a)(2)(B)(i) makes it illegal for anyone to “transport[], transmit[], or transfer[] . . . funds from a place in the United States to or through a place outside the United States” when the individual knows those funds “represent the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity” and also knows that the transfer is “designed in whole or in part . . . to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control” of those proceeds. 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(B)(i). One of Beras’s main laundering practices “involved the transfer of drug proceeds to the Dominican Republic under the guise of phony money remittances through a four-step process.” Dinero I, 313 F.3d at 805. “First, drug traffickers delivered their cash to Dinero’s New York headquarters for gradual deposit into the company’s bank accounts in the United States.” Id. The money would arrive in “bulk” in the form of “big bag[s] full of cash” in amounts ranging from $20,000 to $1,000,000. Sometimes the drug traffickers would drop it off in a locked back room at a Dinero office. Or they would meet Beras at an off-site garage with their car and a “trunk full of 2 Case: 18-30684 Document: 00515608112 Page: 3 Date Filed: 10/20/2020 No. 18-30684 cash.” The money couldn’t always be deposited right away—the drop-offs were after hours—so the cash would be counted and then placed in the safe or stored above the office ceiling. The cash was not always clean. One time, Dinero received $500,000 in ...
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