The laws, Meese says, were pushed to "specify a certain type of aiding and abetting" in drug and crime rings. And indeed they often are used to go after people whom many agree are genuine bad guys. But in those cases it's usually one of several criminal charges filed.

In the indictment of American Muslim Council founder Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is alleged to have helped fund terrorism, a structuring charge is included with several others, including smuggling cash and violating sanctions by taking money from terrorist-sponsoring Libya.

But there also are increasing numbers of prosecutions in which a money-laundering charge appears to be added just to beef up cases where the underlying charges are minor, say critics. In a case to which Meese points that now is on appeal to the Supreme Court, money-laundering charges were added to the weak "environmental-crime" case of David McNab. The fisherman was charged in 2000 with violating the Lacey Act, which makes it a crime to "import fish or wildlife taken in violation ... of any foreign law."

The foreign law in question was a Honduran regulation that made it a crime to harvest lobsters with tails less than 5.5 inches long. While Honduran government officials testified that the law actually was null and void, and only about 3 percent of McNab's lobsters had tails less than 5.5 inches, prosecutors somehow convinced the courts that McNab's depositing of the proceeds of this "crime" in his bank account constituted money laundering.

Heritage's Rosenzweig and civil-liberties groups, such as NACDL, have signed a letter urging the Supreme Court to hear the case and free McNab, who has spent the last four years in prison. (The Justice Department had no comment on McNab's case.)

And, say critics, the USA PATRIOT Act's Title III will catch more McNabs, while doing little to catch terrorists, by demanding that even more businesses defined as "financial institutions" act like police spies.Why you can't trust government.