NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 21a0035n.06 No. 19-6229 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jan 14, 2021 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) ) DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk Plaintiff-Appellee, ) ) ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES v. ) DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN ) DISTRICT OF TENNESSEE OLUFOLAJIMI ABEGUNDE, ) ) OPINION Defendant-Appellant. ) BEFORE: WHITE, STRANCH, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges. JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge. Olufolajimi Abegunde appeals his conviction and sentence for witness tampering and for conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, money laundering, and marriage fraud. In this direct appeal, Abegunde contends that: (1) the district court erred in denying his motion to sever the conspiracy to commit marriage fraud count from the other counts pursuant to Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 8 and 14; (2) the evidence was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict of guilty as to the convictions for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering; (3) the venue was improper; (4) the district court abused its discretion by not providing a jury instruction and demarcation between witnesses’ dual roles as fact and expert witnesses; and (5) the district court erred in using a “loss chart” to determine the economic loss for the proper sentencing range for Abegunde. For the reasons discussed below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. No. 19-6229, United States v. Abegunde I. BACKGROUND A. Facts This case grows out of business email compromise schemes (BEC). The schemes involved hacking into a company’s email servers and creating fake emails directing the company’s employees to wire funds into bank accounts controlled by the perpetrators. Typically, after a sum is wired from a BEC, the money is transferred to multiple other bank accounts before reaching its final destination. This “network” of bank accounts exchanges smaller portions of the initial transfer amount in an attempt to clean the money and to avoid detection by banks and law enforcement.1 Members of the network often do not know one another; they “simply fill a role for some sort of payment along the way.” Banks will sometimes contact account owners that are suspected participants in these networks to alert them to fraud on their account. If the account owner lies about the source of the funds, law enforcement considers the statements as evidence that the owner may be a knowing participant. One of the businesses targeted in a BEC scheme in this case was Crye-Leike, a real estate company in the Western District of Tennessee. A hacker directed a real estate agent to wire $154,000 to a bank account controlled by the perpetrators. The FBI traced the fraudulent Crye- Leike transfer to Javier Luis Ramos-Alonso, Abegunde’s co-defendant. Law enforcement then subpoenaed additional bank records associated with Ramos-Alonso and found other suspicious transactions, including suspected BECs involving other businesses. A scheme involving another business, Whatcom, followed a similar pattern. Company emails were compromised, and a fake email instructed an employee to wire funds to an account ...
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