Sonoma Co. Man Sentenced on Money Laundering, Pot Charges In New Hampshire

By TONY SCHINELLA (Patch Staff)

Robert Geer, 40, of Sonoma County, was sentenced in United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in Concord on federal charges of conspiring to distribute marijuana, and conspiring to engage in money laundering, announced Acting United States Attorney Donald Feith.

The Court imposed a term of 37 months’ imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release.

Beginning around February 2012, and continuing through the end of 2013, Geer, who is originally from Vermont, grew marijuana at his residence in California. He regularly shipped quantities of that marijuana by mail to several individuals in Vermont and New Hampshire, on the condition that those individuals would distribute the marijuana at the retail level, and return to him a pre-determined amount of the proceeds from those sales, according to a report.

To disguise the illicit source of the funds from the marijuana sales, the defendant requested that the individuals in Vermont and New Hampshire – those who received and sold the marijuana – make all payments to him by depositing cash into a business bank account held personally by Geer, to create the impression that the deposited funds derived from a legitimate business enterprise.

Over the course of the scheme, hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit marijuana money flowed through the defendant’s account.

This prosecution arose from an investigation by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations in Manchester. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Nick Abramson.

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