St. Louis woman sentenced for structuring financial transactions

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. — A St. Louis woman was sentenced Friday in federal court for illegally structuring financial transactions, announced James L. Porter, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.

This sentence resulted from an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the FBI.

Kyong Suk Kipilla, 58, of St. Louis, Missouri, was sentenced March 4 to two years’ probation and fined $20,000 for illegally structuring financial transactions. She pleaded guilty to the charges Sept. 3. The judge ordered Kipilla to serve the first six months of probation confined to her home, monitored by an ankle bracelet.

The charges arose from Kipilla’s deposits of proceeds from her prostitution business, the Pink Spa, located in Centreville, Illinois. Federal law requires financial institutions to report currency transactions (such as currency deposits) greater than $10,000 to the IRS. Federal law also prohibits a person from structuring currency transactions to evade this reporting requirement. Kipilla engaged in structuring bank deposits in amounts less than $10,000 to avoid this reporting requirement.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen B. Clark, Southern District of Illinois.