U.S. v. Saffo
| Decision Date | 18 September 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. 99-6276,99-6276 |
| Parties | (10th Cir. 2000) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. RANDA SAFFO, Defendant-Appellant |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma (D.C. No. CR-98-80-R) [Copyrighted Material Omitted] John W. Coyle, III (Catherine M. Burton with him on the brief), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Defendant-Appellant.
Mary M. Smith, Assistant United States Attorney (Daniel G. Webber, Jr., United States Attorney, with her on the brief), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Before EBEL, ANDERSON, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
On May 20, 1998, the Grand Jury for the Western District of Oklahoma charged defendant Randa Saffo and four others, Suhail Saffo, Nouhad Rached "Nick" El-Hajjaoui, Richard Kevin Day, and Mohammed Abdul Majid, in a twenty-nine count indictment. The charges stemmed from an elaborate conspiracy of possessing and distributing pseudoephedrine1 in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(d)(2), and engaging in money laundering transactions related to the pseudoephedrine distributions. After a seven-day jury trial, Saffo was convicted on all counts against her. She was sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 121 months and 120 months, to run concurrently, as well as a three-year period of supervised release, a special assessment of $1,000, and a fine of $100,000. She appeals, raising five issues. Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm.
In August 1997, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) received a tip that Verdi Wholesale, a Las Vegas business, was having pseudoephedrine delivered to Las Vegas and then transported to California for the manufacture of methamphetamine. Surveillance led to agents following a van, which was being driven by David Verdi, after it picked up forty cases of pseudoephedrine in Las Vegas. Agents stopped the van when it crossed the California state line.2 Inside the van, the agents found forty cases of pseudoephedrine, a shoe box with $24,965 in cash, checkbooks in five different business names and two different personal checking account names, and $165,000 in cashier checks. The agents also found the following: a small green spiral notebook that had the home, work, fax, and cellular telephone numbers of Randa Saffo ("Saffo") in Oklahoma City; Saffo's address in Oklahoma City under the heading "Noble Idea"; Federal Express receipts showing deliveries from David Verdi to Saffo in Oklahoma City and to Marcia Peterson at a company called Green Arrow Internationals, Inc. ("Green Arrow") in Las Vegas, Nevada; and a receipt for a cashier's check from Verdi Wholesale to "Noble Idea" in the amount of $7,000 drawn on Upland Bank, Upland, California.
DEA agents went to Green Arrow in Las Vegas and interviewed Nouhad Rached "Nick" El-Hajjaoui ("El-Hajjaoui"), who owned Green Arrow, and his assistant Marcia Peterson. At the meeting, DEA agents learned that David Verdi of Verdi Wholesale was ordering pseudoephedrine through Green Arrow. They also learned that Verdi was using two other companies, MA Distributing and 4-BBB, to order pseudoephedrine from Green Arrow. The agents explained to El-Hajjaoui and Peterson what they knew about Verdi's involvement, and El-Hajjaoui stated that he would no longer do business with Verdi through Verdi Wholesale or his other businesses. At this time, El-Hajjaoui and Peterson knew that pseudoephedrine could be illegally converted into methamphetamine. They had seen a DEA "Red Notice" form that contained warnings about illegal use of pseudoephedrine.
On August 14, 1997, DEA agents seized a second shipment of pseudoephedrine belonging to Verdi. Novel Ideas, a company in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, had sold this pseudoephedrine to Verdi. After the first stop of Verdi in August 1997, Green Arrow had begun doing business with Randa Saffo and Kevin Day, the owner of Novel Ideas. El-Hajjaoui made the initial contact with them and subsequently advised Peterson that he had obtained two new distributors, Novel Ideas and a company called Pamela's which was also located in Oklahoma and was connected with Randa Saffo.3 When El-Hajjaoui and Peterson flew out to Oklahoma to inspect their new distributors, Peterson learned that Pamela's and Novel Ideas' only customer for pseudoephedrine was Randa Saffo's company, Best Buy.
In September 1997, after Peterson requested that Novel Ideas and Pamela's send her their customer lists, Pamela's faxed Peterson a customer list that included the following companies: Associated Grocers in Tucson, Arizona; Arizona Produce Co. in Gilbert, Arizona; Bingo Cash and Carry in Phoenix, Arizona; and Arizona Trading in Phoenix, Arizona. After attempting to contact the purported customers, Peterson discovered the companies were either non-existent or did not sell pseudoephedrine. Peterson told El-Hajjaoui that the customer list was bogus and that she was going to stop the order. El-Hajjaoui got angry and told her to place the order. The next day, El-Hajjaoui said to Peterson, 4 Peterson told El-Hajjaoui she could not live with that, and their business relationship ended. Peterson then went to the DEA and began cooperating with them.
El-Hajjaoui continued to purchase pseudoephedrine for Saffo for distribution to the purported customers. In March 1998, El-Hajjaoui discovered that Peterson had withdrawn Green Arrow's application for a license from the DEA to distribute pseudoephedrine legally. Shortly thereafter, El-Hajjaoui telephoned Marvin Lathan, one of the owners of Pamela's, and asked Lathan to order pseudoephedrine for him until he could get his DEA license. He offered Lathan a fee of $15,000 a week. The following day, in a telephone call recorded by the DEA with Lathan's consent, Lathan and El-Hajjaoui discussed the proposed business arrangement. After the telephone conversation, Lathan received faxed documents from El-Hajjaoui showing that El-Hajjaoui's purported customers were M.A. Distributing, Mohammed Majid, and 4-BBB. These were company names used by David Verdi, but investigation revealed that the companies did not exist or used the same address.
The arrangement between Saffo, the Lathans, and Green Arrow was as follows: Saffo would tell Marvin Lathan the amount of pseudoephedrine to order; Lathan would fax an order to Green Arrow in Las Vegas; and Green Arrow would order the pseudoephedrine from a manufacturer in New York and direct a shipment to Pamela's in Oklahoma City. From Pamela's the shipment was supposed to be picked up by representatives of the purported Arizona business customers in rental trucks. Saffo received payment for the pseudoephedrine in cash, in Federal Express envelopes. When Marvin Lathan refused to accept cash for the transactions, Saffo gave him cashier's checks. Marvin Lathan deposited the cashier's checks in Pamela's business account at Charter Bank in Oklahoma City. Marvin Lathan would then wire transfer funds from the Charter Bank account to the Las Vegas bank account of Green Arrow for payment of the pseudoephedrine. Saffo directed that her name be kept off all the purchase orders, and that paperwork on the pseudoephedrine purchases should be destroyed.
Randa Saffo and El-Hajjaoui provided Marvin Lathan with copies of the business licenses of the purported Arizona customers. None of these were real customers.
Randa Saffo rented self storage units in the Oklahoma City area under fictitious names or the names of others. She used the storage units to store pseudoephedrine shipped to Pamela's. At Saffo's direction, Marvin Lathan and his daughter-in-law tore labels off the boxes of pseudoephedrine and repacked the pseudoephedrine into larger boxes before it was loaded into the rental trucks.
On December 15, 1997, Pamela Lathan met with Saffo. DEA agents monitored and videotaped the meeting. During the meeting, Pamela Lathan showed Saffo a DEA "Red Notice," which advised that criminals use bulk pseudoephedrine and pseudoephedrine products to manufacture methamphetamine. Saffo discussed the notice with Pamela Lathan and assured her that the pseudoephedrine was going to Arizona.
In addition to the pseudoephedrine Saffo was ordering through the Lathans' business, Saffo was receiving large quantities of pseudoephedrine from Kevin Day's company, Novel Ideas. Brian Miller, an employee of Novel Ideas, drove shipments of pseudoephedrine to Saffo's residence, her beauty shop, and the self storage units. Kevin Day accompanied Miller on at least one of the deliveries. During one two-month period, the shipments amounted to approximately 360 cases of pseudoephedrine per week.
Saffo paid for the Novel Ideas pseudoephedrine in cash. On one occasion, Miller had to wait for Saffo to receive a Federal Express delivery so that she could pay him for the shipment. Miller transported over $250,000 in cash on two occasions, and he estimated that he carried approximately $800,000 in cash during the eight to ten-month period he was transporting the money.
Day and Saffo's purported customers were the same Arizona companies as the Lathan sales. In late summer or early fall of 1997, Miller attempted to contact the companies to see if they wanted to purchase some pseudoephedrine from a recent shipment. Miller was only able to reach one of the companies, and was told that pseudoephedrine was not a product the company used in its business. Miller told Kevin Day of his attempt to contact the companies, and also told him that he thought something was not right. Novel Ideas continued to sell pseudoephedrine to Saffo's purported Arizona customers after that date.
Day had applied for his licence to distribute in May 1997. In June 1997, the DEA...
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