NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Chicago, Illinois 60604 Argued August 8, 2018 Decided August 28, 2018 Before WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge MICHAEL B. BRENNAN, Circuit Judge No. 17-3095 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appeal from the United States District Plaintiff-Appellee, Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. v. No. 14-CR-00539-12 JOSE SANANTONIO, Andrea R. Wood, Defendant-Appellant. Judge. ORDER Police stopped Jose Sanantonio as he was transporting money from drug sales for the Sinaloa drug cartel. He eventually told the officers that he had delivered money before under similar circumstances. Later he pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit money laundering. See 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h). At sentencing, the district judge found that (1) Sanantonio obstructed justice by lying at a pretrial hearing about not having received his Miranda rights before speaking with law enforcement, and (2) his prior deliveries were relevant conduct to his offense. Sanantonio contests those findings. Because the judge sufficiently supported her perjury finding, and Sanantonio’s statements about his conduct were reliable, we affirm the judgment. No. 17-3095 Page 2 I. Jose Sanantonio was a courier for the Sinaloa cartel, a Mexico-based money laundering organization that laundered $100 million from drug proceeds between 2011 and 2014. For about one year, his role in the conspiracy was to receive, store, and deliver money to others who, according to the government, purchased and resold gold for cash that then was sent to Mexico. Police stopped Sanantonio as he was driving to deliver $100,000 in cash to an undercover agent in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Joliet, Illinois. He then led police to another $122,000 at his house. After seizing the money in his possession, the officers took Sanantonio to the police station, where he signed a waiver of his Miranda rights and described his involvement in the conspiracy. As summarized in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report, Sanantonio admitted to the police that co-conspirators gave him bags of cash containing an additional $344,000 to store and transfer. From that stash, he made three separate deliveries: (1) $77,000 to $78,000 to an unknown man at Joliet Mall, (2) $120,000 to a man at a restaurant near O’Hare International Airport, and (3) $50,000 to another unknown man at a restaurant near an outlet mall in Aurora, Illinois. (We note a discrepancy between how much cash Sanantonio said he received and stored and how much he said he delivered, but he does not argue that this discrepancy undercuts the judge’s finding of his relevant conduct.) After he was indicted by a grand jury, Sanantonio learned that police were “unable to locate” the signed Miranda waiver, and he moved to suppress the statements about his involvement in the conspiracy. At the suppression hearing, Sanantonio testified at least six times (responding to repeated questions from his lawyer) that law enforcement never read him his Miranda rights. He ...
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