U.S. v. Oliveros, 00-13390

• Decision Date: 17 December 2001
• Docket Number: No. 00-13390,00-13390
• Citation: 275 F.3d 1299
• Parties: (11th Cir. 2001) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ARMANDO OLIVEROS, Defendant-Appellant
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1299

275 F.3d 1299 (11th Cir. 2001)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ARMANDO OLIVEROS, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 00-13390

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

December 17, 2001

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida

Before EDMONDSON and CARNES, Circuit Judges, and MUSGRAVE^*, Judge.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

Armando Oliveros was convicted of six counts of money laundering under 18 U.S.C. §1956(a)(3)(B) and sentenced to 97 months on each count to run concurrently. In this appeal he raises three contentions that merit discussion. One concerns the sufficiency of the evidence to prove the jurisdictional element of the money-laundering crime for which he was convicted. Oliveros' other two contentions concern the informant who was the principal witness against him. Oliveros complains about the district court's refusal to permit him to present expert testimony about immigration law in order to prove that the informant witness had received more assistance from the government than he admitted. He also complains that the government violated Giglio v. U.S., 405 U.S. 150, 154, 92 S. Ct. 763, 766 (1972), by making false statements to the jury about the assistance that the informant witness had received in return for his cooperation. For the reasons that follow, we reject Oliveros' contentions and affirm his conviction.

I. FACTS

Armando Oliveros, a lawyer who at the time of his arrest was vice-mayor of the City of South Miami, was convicted of six counts of money laundering. The conviction was the culmination of an FBI sting orchestrated by the Public Corruption Task Force, a combined federal-state operation.

The government's central informant in the sting was Julian Casanova, a Cuban national, long-time drug importer, and former client of Oliveros. A career criminal, Casanova had last been arrested in 1992 for drug trafficking he engaged in while serving as an United States Customs informant, and subsequent to that arrest he had entered into a plea agreement in which he pledged more cooperation. Oliveros briefly represented Casanova in that criminal matter, and he also handled some related civil matters for him. While Casanova was serving his sentence for that crime, he continued to cooperate with law enforcement, providing information about drug trafficking in the Miami area.

Still cooperating with law enforcement after his release, Casanova informed Detective Omar Carillo of the Miami-Dade Police Department that Oliveros had laundered money for Casanova in the past. Carillo and FBI Special Agent Talarah Gruber, who were both on the Public Corruption Task Force, planned an operation targeting Oliveros in which Casanova was to be the confidential informant. The sting began with Casanova contacting Oliveros by phone. In that initial conversation, as he had been instructed to do by the FBI, Casanova told Oliveros that he was back in business trafficking narcotics. That conversation was unrecorded, however, and at trial Oliveros disputed what was said during it. The first face-to-face, recorded meeting between Casanova and Oliveros was on August 11, 1999 when the two of them met at Casanova's house. They discussed Oliveros' fee for money laundering, which was ten percent, and how Oliveros would "clean" the money by using the escrow account of his law practice.

The money-laundering scheme entailed a series of cash-for-checks exchanges. On three occasions - August 18, September 3, and September 23, 1999 - Casanova gave Oliveros $50,000 in cash, which the FBI had withdrawn from its bank account at SunTrust Bank in Miami. Then, on three corresponding occasions - August 25, September 13, and October 4- Oliveros gave Casanova $45,000 in checks reflecting the amount of the laundered cash less Oliveros' commission. The August 25 and September 13 checks were drawn on Oliveros' escrow account. On October 4, Oliveros gave Casanova three checks totaling $45,000, two of which were drawn on Oliveros' escrow account and one of which was drawn on an account by the name of Union Bailbonds, Union Bailbonds being a company operated by Oliveros' brother-in-law. After each transaction, the FBI deposited the checks Casanova received from Oliveros into the FBI's SunTrust account.

Oliveros was charged by information with six counts of money laundering.¹ Counts I, III, and V of the information charged him with receiving $50,000 in cash, which Casanova had represented to Oliveros to be the proceeds of illegal activity. Counts II, IV, and VI charged Oliveros with delivering to Casanova the "cleaned" $45,000 in checks.

At trial Oliveros claimed that Casanova had entrapped him, arguing that Casanova pressured and tricked him. He said that he did not know the cash was purportedly the proceeds of narcotics trafficking the first time he accepted cash from Casanova. It was not until the second time that he accepted cash that he thought that it might be "dirty," but by that point, Oliveros stated he felt obligated to help his friend. Casanova testified that he had told Oliveros the money was from drug trafficking before the first time he gave cash to him. Oliveros attempted to impeach Casanova by focusing on his potential bias resulting from the favorable immigration treatment that he had received in return for his participation in the sting and his testimony at trial. Oliveros contended that Casanova was treated more favorably than either the government or Casanova revealed. After a nine-day trial, the jury convicted Oliveros of all six counts, and the district court sentenced him to 97 months' imprisonment on each count, to run concurrently. Oliveros timely filed this appeal.

II. DISCUSSION ²

A. SUFFICIENCY OF THE EVIDENCE TO PROVE THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ELEMENT OF MONEY LAUNDERING

Oliveros contends that the government did not prove that the money laundering transactions for which he was convicted had an interstate commerce nexus. Under §1956(c)(4)(B), which sets out one of the alternative jurisdictional elements of the money laundering statute, the government must prove both that a financial institution was engaged in or affected interstate commerce, and that the transaction involved the use of the financial institution. Oliveros does not dispute that the evidence was sufficient to prove that SunTrust Bank, from which the "dirty" cash was withdrawn and into which the "clean" checks were deposited, is a financial institution engaged in interstate commerce.³ Instead, he contends that the transactions (his receipt of the cash and delivery of the checks) were not "financial transactions" as that term is defined in 18 U.S.C. §1956(c)(4), because they did not involve the financial institution (SunTrust).

Oliveros bases his argument that the bank was not involved in the transactions on United States v. Kramer, 73 F.3d 1067, 1072 (11th Cir. 1996). In that case, we held that under the money-laundering statute, "each transaction or transfer of money constitutes a separate offense." According to Oliveros, the money-laundering scheme which formed the basis of his conviction consisted of several distinct offenses (some of which were not charged): (i) his accepting the cash from Casanova; (ii) his depositing the cash in a bank account; (iii) his delivering the check to Casanova; and (iv) the FBI's depositing the check into its account. Because Oliveros was only charged with receiving the cash from and delivering the checks to Casanova, those particular transactions must have their own interstate commerce nexus and cannot share a nexus with other distinct offenses within the same money-laundering scheme. Or so Oliveros argues.

We disagree. The statute defines a "financial transaction" as a "transaction involving the use of a financial institution which is engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce in any way or degree." 18 U.S.C. §1956(c)(4)(B) (emphasis added). In interpreting a statute, we adhere to its plain meaning. See CBS, Inc., v. Primetime 24 Joint Venture, 245 F.3d 1217, 1222 (11th Cir. 2001); United States v. Steele, 147 F.3d 1316, 1318 (11th Cir. 1998)(en banc). The plain meaning of this statute does not require that use of the financial institution be an integral or essential part of the particular transaction which forms the basis of the conviction, but only that the transaction involve the use of the institution in some way. Because the money-laundering statute reaches the full extent of Congress' Commerce Clause power, see United States v. Peay, 972 F.2d 71, 74 (4th Cir. 1992); see also Stirone v. United States, 361 U.S. 212, 215, 80 S. Ct. 270, 272 (1960) (interpreting the Hobbs Act from which the money-laundering statute derived its language), the government satisfies the interstate commerce requirement under §1956(c)(4)(B) when it proves that a financial institution with an interstate nexus was, at least, incidentally involved in the transaction charged in the indictment. Incidental involvement or use is enough.

Case law in other circuits supports our interpretation of §1956(c)(4)(B). See United States v. Koller, 956 F.2d 1408, 1410-12 (7th Cir. 1992) ("The statute does not, however, literally require that the use of the financial institution with the interstate commerce nexus be a part of, contribute to, or facilitate the design to conceal, and since the purpose of the interstate commerce nexus is to provide a predicate for federal legislative jurisdiction we think that the use of the financial institution involved in the transaction may be incidental, as it was here, and need not be shown to have been a part of, contributed to, or facilitated the design to conceal."); see also United States v. Laurenzana, 113 F.3d 689, 692 & n.1 (7th Cir. 1997) (reiterating "that the connection to interstate commerce required for a money-laundering offense need only be 'incidental' to the...