This is not some random Western Union fly-by-night process. These are serious bank-to-bank transfers with plenty of documentation about who's who on both ends. That documentation is required not only by bank policy but by law (e.g. IRS and anti-terrorism laws). The fact that the wire transfers are highlighted so much in the charges is that they are interstate transactions, which makes them federal crimes rather than state crimes. Which gives the Feds an excuse to get involved.
Refer to Wickard v Filburn. Whether a transaction leaves the state doesn't mean dick to interstate commerce clause. The interstate commerce is interpreted to mean basically any possession/production/consumption of goods regardless if they leave the state or even enter commerce. Supreme court decided even growing crops for use on animals on your own land is interstate commerce.
This is the reason why you can catch a federal charge for growing your own pot or making your own machine gun, despite it never leaving your property nor any desire or act to enter commerce/trade. Even merely _where_ you store your goods for personal non-commercial use in your own state is considered interstate commerce, a la Gun-Free School Zone Act.
Fair enough. But United States v Lopez weakened the Gun-Free School Zone Act a bit to require prosecutors to prove a link between the gun in question and interstate commerce.
In theory it weakened it but in practice it did not. Merely creating a good yourself in your own state for your own personal non-commercial use is considered interstate commerce. See Supreme Court refusing to hear Kettler's conviction for buying a suppressor made in the same state (the NFA regulating suppressors is constitutional through the interstate commerce clause, and gun parts made completely in one state for consumption in that state are interstate commerce), and the many other convictions for home made guns. All firearms have interstate commerce legally even if there is no link from any practical/physical viewpoint. You could pull iron out of the ground underneath your house, refine and form it yourself and create your own machine shop purely from raw material in your state and then make a gun, completely bypassing any trade of a single molecule from another state and it would be interstate commerce. The requirement for a link is a meaningless gesture to ensure the writing of it is constitutionally accurate.
