Justia White Collar Crime Opinion Summaries

Fabian Muyaba, Joseph Mudekunye, and three co-defendants were charged in a 39-count indictment stemming from their tax-fraud conspiracy. Muyaba, Mudekunye, and one co-defendant were convicted in a joint jury trial. Muyaba challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support his convictions; the district court's applying two Sentencing Guidelines enhancements; and its ordering part of his sentence to run consecutively. Mudekunye challenged the district court's failure to sever his trial from Muyaba's and his sentence as being procedurally unreasonable. The court held that, in light of the significant disparity between Mudekunye's sentence and the top of the correct Guidelines range and the absence of any evidence suggesting that the court would have sentenced him to 97 months imprisonment irrespective of the correct Guidelines range, Mudekunye had shown a reasonable probability of a lesser sentence and therefore, demonstrated that the district court's clear error affected his substantial rights. The court also held that the substantial disparity between the imposed sentence and the applicable Guidelines range warranted the exercise of the court's discretion to correct the error and Mudekunye's sentence was vacated and remanded for resentencing. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgment on every ground with the exception of Mudekunye's sentence.

Martin J. Bradley III and his father, Martin J. Bradley, Jr. (collectively, the Bradleys), owned Bio-Med Plus, Inc. (Bio-Med), a Miami-based pharmaceutical wholesaler that purchased and sold blood-derivatives. This case stemmed from multiple schemes to defraud the Florida and California Medicaid programs by causing them to pay for blood-derivative medications more than once. The Government chose to prosecute the schemes and a grand jury indicted eight individuals, including Albert L. Tellechea, and two companies, Bio-Med, and Interland Associates, Inc. The Bradleys, Bio-Med, and Tellechea subsequently appealed their convictions and raised several issues on appeal. The court affirmed the Bradleys', Bio-Med's, and Tellechea's convictions, and Bradley III's and Bio-Med's sentences. The court vacated Bradley, Jr.'s sentences on Counts I and 54 and Tellechea's sentence on Count 3, and remanded those counts for resentencing. The court reversed the district court's October 4, 2006 order appointing the receiver and monitor, and its supplemental receivership order of May 17, 2007. The court finally held that, as soon as circumstances allowed, the receivership should be brought to an immediate close.

Defendant pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering related to a massive Ponzi scheme and was sentenced to 130 months imprisonment. At issue was whether the district court failed to adequately explain the sentence, failed to properly consider the sentencing factors set forth in 18 U.S.C. 3553(a), assigned too much significance to irrelevant factors, and imposed a sentence greater than necessary to achieve federal sentencing goals. The court held that the district court engaged in a sufficiently detailed explanation of its reasons for imposing the sentence and did not commit procedural error. The court also held that the district court properly considered and weighed the evidence and therefore, defendant's sentence was not substantively unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the sentence.

Defendant Herman Ransom appealed a district court's denial of his motion for acquittal or for a new trial after he was convicted on wire fraud and theft of public money. Defendant was accused of falsifying his time sheets from work at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). When Defendant took full-day leaves, he listed "8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m." as his working hours. Though an assistant prepared the time sheets, he signed them and a supervisor approved them. The records were then forwarded via wire to a central processing unit. HUD received an anonymous complaint about Defendant's frequent absences from the office, and an internal investigation would reveal the discrepancy in his time sheets. On appeal to the Tenth Circuit, Defendant challenged the validity of the evidence presented against him at trial. Upon review of the record and the applicable legal standard, the Tenth Circuit found sufficient evidence to support Defendant's conviction on wire fraud and theft charges. The Court affirmed the lower court's decision and Defendant's conviction.

Former Arizona Congressman Richard G. Renzi sought to invoke the Speech or Debate Clause ("Clause") of the Constitution to preclude his prosecution for allegedly using his public office to benefit himself rather than his constituents. Renzi denied the charges against him but argued on interlocutory appeal that he was protected by the Clause from even the burden of defending himself. Specifically, Renzi claimed that the public corruption charges against him amounted to prosecution on account of his privileged "legislative acts"; that "legislative act" evidence was improperly presented to the grand jury; that the United States must show that its investigation did not benefit from its review of "legislative act" evidence; and that the district court erred by declining to wholly suppress all of the evidence against him relating to his illicit "negotiations." The court held that it lacked jurisdiction under the collateral order doctrine to consider Renzi's suppression claim and therefore, dismissed that part of his appeal. The court also held that the Clause was a privilege that "had enabled reckless men to slander and even destroy others with impunity," but the Supreme Court had made equally clear that the Clause did not "make Members of Congress super-citizens, immune from criminal responsibility." Accordingly, the court held that Renzi's actions fell beyond the Clause's protections and denied him the relief that he sought.

Defendant appealed from a judgment of conviction for securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. At issue, among other things, was whether venue was proper in the Eastern District of New York. The court held that venue in the Eastern District was proper for the conspiracy counts where defendant committed overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracies in the Eastern District. Accordingly, the court did not find venue for the conspiracy charges to be unfair or prejudicial. The court held, however, that venue in the Eastern District was improper for the substantive securities fraud count where no conduct that constituted the offense took place in the Eastern District. Accordingly, nothing in United States v. Svoboda called into question the principle that preparatory acts alone were insufficient to establish venue. Therefore, the court affirmed in part and reversed in part.

Defendants fraudulently obtained over 300 mortgage-backed loans for buyers who used the loans to purchase houses and condominiums from defendants at more than market value. An indictment charged 18 defendants with a total of 187 counts, including three separate conspiracies and a host of substantive counts. The jury delivered split verdicts on defendants and guilty verdicts on other defendants. Numerous issues were raised on appeal related to defendants' motions for severance, jury selection issues, evidentiary issues, miscellaneous trial issues, the sufficiency of the evidence, double jeopardy claims, Kastigar v. United States claims, and sentencing issues. The court affirmed all the convictions and sentences of all of defendants in all respects except that the court vacated the district court's order denying Leslie Rector's motion to dismiss, which asserted as its ground that the government had breached the proffer agreement; as to that motion, the court remanded for further proceedings.

Appellant, a primary care physician who served Medicaid patients in the District of Columbia, appealed his convictions for health care fraud and for making false statements relating to health care matters, as well as his 53 month prison sentence. At issue was whether the district court committed evidentiary errors and improperly refused to give the good faith instruction appellant requested. Also at issue was whether appellant's sentence was procedurally unreasonable. The court found no merit in appellant's assertions of trial errors and affirmed the judgment of conviction. The court held, however, that because the district gave an inadequate explanation for its above-Guidelines sentence and because this procedural defect amounted to plain error, the court vacated the sentence and remanded for further proceedings.

Defendant was indicted along with seventeen other people in a mortgage fraud case and was tried separately from his co-defendants because he insisted on proceeding pro se, at least up until the very day his trial began. The jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts and defendant now challenged his convictions. The court held that the district court acted well within its discretion when it refused to grant defendant yet another continuance on the day set for the trial to begin where defendant had insisted on proceeding pro se despite the district court's repeated warnings and thereby, contributed to his own situation. The court also held that defendant's Fourteenth Amendment right to a fair trial was not violated by the fact that he wore prison attire instead of furnishing his own street clothes as he had promised the court he would do. The court further held that the district court did not err in permitting a former real estate attorney to testify as a lay witness because the part of the witness' testimony that was elicited by the government was based on his own personal knowledge of mortgage fraud and therefore, he did not have to be qualified as an expert. Accordingly, the court affirmed the convictions.

After a jury trial, Defendant David Hillman was convicted on several money laundering charges arising from a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the insurance company for which he worked. Defendant's defense at trial was that he was duped by his then-girlfriend and co-worker, Hillary Shaffer, as to the source of the money. Defendant maintained that Ms. Shaffer told him the money they deposited in their joint bank account came from her grandmother's trust. The trial record revealed that the source of the money came from inactive annuities of the company's clients. On appeal to the Tenth Circuit, Defendant argued multiple errors at trial: prosecutorial misconduct, a violation of his due process rights, and misguided jury instructions all denied him a fair trial. Upon review of Defendant's arguments against the trial record, the Tenth Circuit concluded that none of his claims fundamentally affected the fairness of his trial or were otherwise an abuse of discretion by the trial court. Accordingly, the Court affirmed Defendant's conviction.