Earlier this week, South Carolina resident William D. Humphries was sentenced to six years in prison by a U.S. District Court in Syracuse, New York. The 67-year-old was found guilty on multiple charges of financial fraud, including 41 counts of federal money laundering, one count of racketeering and one count of conspiracy to defraud the country of Canada of tax revenue.
Humphries was convicted of these charges, among others, back in November 2013 and has been awaiting sentencing since. Humphries was involved in many different financial crimes, but the money laundering was his biggest offense. He made a substantial amount of money between 2005 and 2006 — at least $2 million — from illegally smuggling and selling marijuana both in the United States and Canada.
In order to hide where he got the money, Humphries began taking the profits to the Mohawk Bingo Palace in upstate New York. There he would insert large amounts of the currency into electronic bingo machines and repeatedly cash out at the cashiers' windows. This was an attempt to get rid of the money he had that literally smelled like marijuana. He was caught after government informants began to catch on to his various financial misdeeds, and was able to record Humphries explaining what he was doing with his profits.
Because of the size of his crimes — he defrauded the Canadian government out of nearly $40 million by smuggling cigarettes into the country — Humphries was also ordered to pay $7 million in damages and an additional $4,400 special assessment fee. Once released from his sentence, Humphries will be supervised by federal authorities for a period of three years.
