Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371 and 31 U.S.C. 5363, and other charges. The indictment alleged that three leading internet poker companies doing business in the United States violated section 5363 by deceiving United States banks and financial institutions into processing billions of dollars in payments for illegal gambling activity on their sites. The companies accomplished the alleged deception by hiring third-party payment processors, such as defendant, to disguise payments from United States gamblers as payments to hundreds of purportedly legitimate, but non-existent, online merchants and other non-gambling businesses. The court held that, in light of United States v. Cotton, the question of whether defendant's conduct constituted a conspiracy to violate the UIGEA was a non-jurisdictional challenge to the prosecution; count one of the indictment sufficiently invoked the district court's jurisdiction by alleging that defendant had committed a federal criminal offense at a stated time and place in terms of plainly tracking the language of the relevant statute; defendant's unconditional guilty plea to count one precluded his argument on appeal that he was convicted of a so-called "non-offense" under the UIGEA; and defendant's sentence was neither substantively nor procedurally unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Rubin" on Justia Law

Defendant executed several illegal insider trades involving the stock of the supermarket chain Albertson's using material nonpublic information received from an employee of UBS. On appeal, defendant challenged the district court's judgment ordering him to disgorge profits from illegal insider trading, enjoining him from further violating the securities laws, and ordering him to pay prejudgment interest on the entire disgorgement amount. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ordering disgorgement because the court's cases have established that tippers can be required to disgorge profits realized by their tippees' illegal insider trading. This case was distinguishable only insofar as defendant himself executed the fraudulent trades rather than leave that task to a tippee. The court found no abuse of discretion in the district court's imposition of an injunction on defendant or in its order that he pay prejudgment interest. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "SEC v. Contorinis" on Justia Law

Defendant was convicted of conspiring to commit honest-services wire fraud and securities fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1343, 1346, 1348, and 1349, as well as making a false statement in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(2). On appeal, defendant principally argued that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to support his conviction of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in light of Skilling v. United States and that he was therefore entitled to a judgment of acquittal on the conspiracy count, or that he was entitled to a new trial on that count because the district court's instructions to the jury erroneously permitted conviction on an impermissible theory of honest-services fraud. The court concluded that the district court properly denied defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal where the evidence was sufficient to permit the jury to find that he conspired to commit honest-services wire fraud by means of having intermediary firms pay kickbacks to his father and brother in connection with Morgan Stanley's stock-loan transactions for which his father and brother performed little or no work. The district court's failure to anticipate the ruling in Skilling and instruct that the government was required to prove a scheme involving bribery or kickbacks was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and did not affect the verdict. The court considered all of defendant's arguments on appeal and found them to be without merit. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. DeMizio" on Justia Law

Defendant pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Defendant, a Sri Lankan native, was the principal procurement officer for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a foreign terrorist organization. On appeal, the Government challenged defendant's 108 months prison sentence as substantively unreasonable. The district court had found many mitigating circumstances: defendant was motivated not by power or self-aggrandizement, but by a desire to help the Tamil people; defendant's actions had to be evaluated in context where he was caught in an ongoing civil war with serious human rights violations on both sides of the conflict; defendant did not have a criminal record; defendant had accepted full responsibility for his crimes; during the six years of his incarceration, defendant was a model inmate who earned the gratitude of other prisoners by his efforts to teach them math and other subjects; as well as other considerations. The court concluded that, in light of defendant's personal history and characteristics, the nature and circumstances of his crimes, and all of the relevant factors, the sentence imposed was not substantively unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Thavaraja" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a prisoner serving a New York State sentence, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that defendants violated his constitutional rights by failing to provide him with necessary medical treatment during his incarceration at a correctional facility and by punishing him for his efforts to secure such treatment. The district court dismissed the action with prejudice. The court concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by imposing the sanction of dismissal with prejudice, nor did it err in its underlying finding that plaintiff acted in bad faith such that no other sanction would suffice. The court clarified that the offending conduct for which the sanction was imposed was not plaintiff's accusations that the Magistrate Judge was biased against him, but rather his offensive, abusive, and insulting language. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "Koehl v. Bernstein" on Justia Law

Defendants appealed from the district court's denial of summary judgment on their claims of qualified immunity for purported violations of the Fourth Amendment and state tort law based upon omissions made by Investigator Riley in the application for a search warrant of plaintiff's home. In this case, plaintiff's identity, the fact that the confidential informant did not report that a woman was present in the apartment, and the fact that attempts at independent corroboration via surveillance showed no sign of criminal activity were all omissions that bear upon the reliability of the overall information provided. The court dismissed the appeal based on lack of jurisdiction where disputed material factual issues underlie the district court's denial of qualified immunity. View "McColley v. County of Rensselaer" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm (Count 1) and possession of a controlled substance (Count 2). The court affirmed defendant's conviction on Count 1. However, the court could no say that it was an absolute impossibility for a person with his hands securely handcuffed behind his back to extract a substantial quantity of crack cocaine from his person or clothing and wedge it into the space where the quantity was found - the space between the back of the back-seat cushion and the bottom of the back-seat rest in the police car - without leaving a trace of cocaine on his fingers or clothing, but the court could say that the possibility of such an occurrence was so exceedingly remote that no jury could reasonably find beyond a reasonable doubt that it happened. Accordingly, the court reversed defendant's conviction as to Count 2. View "United States v. Clark" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed his conviction for being voluntarily present and found in the United States, arguing that he was not in the United States when he was found. The court concluded that, although defendant had indisputably been present in the United States illegally for nearly a decade, defendant was not "found" while has in the country. When he was found - admittedly not long after his departure from the United States - defendant had neither a physical nor a legal presence in the country. When defendant had been "found" at the Canadian border, he had been returned involuntarily with neither a desire to enter, nor a will to be present in, the United States. Accordingly, the court reversed and remanded, concluding that defendant was not "found in" the United States within the meaning of 8 U.S.C. 1326. View "United States v. Vasquez Macias" on Justia Law

Defendant, a Jamaican citizen, pleaded guilty to illegal reentry into the United States. On appeal, defendant challenged his sentence of 77 months' imprisonment, arguing that the district court lacked the authority to deny the Government's motion for a departure under U.S.S.G. 5K3.1. The court affirmed, concluding that the plain text of section 5K3.1 foreclosed defendant's arguments and holding that a district court may, but need not, depart downward upon an appropriate motion by the Government under section 5K3.1. View "United States v. Shand" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed from his sentence of 72 months' imprisonment for participation in a conspiracy to violate the federal narcotics laws and for participating in a money-laundering conspiracy. The court held that the district court did not err in denying defendant's motion to compel the government to provide him with a recommendation letter under U.S.S.G. 5K1.1 or 18 U.S.C. 3553(e) pursuant to a Cooperation Agreement where the government had a good-faith belief that defendant had breached the Agreement by committing further crimes and exercised its discretion in deciding not to file the motion. The court also held that defendant's sentence was neither substantively nor procedurally unreasonable. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment of the district court. View "United States v. Doe" on Justia Law