United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No. 19-1780 UNITED STATES, Appellee, v. FRANCISCO OSCAR GRULLON, a/k/a Frank, Defendant, Appellant. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS [Hon. Leo T. Sorokin, U.S. District Judge] Before Lynch, Lipez, and Thompson, Circuit Judges. Andrew S. Dulberg, with whom Russell Spivak, Felicia H. Ellsworth, and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP were on brief, for appellant. Elysa Q. Wan, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee. April 27, 2021 THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. Francisco Oscar Grullon is one of at least several coconspirators the government has prosecuted for participating in a massive scheme to defraud the federal government by falsifying tax returns.1 Once arrested, Grullon faced charges commensurate with his coconspirators, some of whom had already pleaded guilty or had been convicted. Grullon proceeded to trial where a jury convicted him of multiple counts. Now, he appeals several evidentiary rulings by the district court as well as the district court's application of two sentencing enhancements. Discovering no errors, we affirm. Background The Scheme Beginning in October 2011, Grullon, a native of the Dominican Republic who immigrated to the United States when he was nine, conspired with a Massachusetts lawyer named David Cohen and others to defraud the United States. The conspiracy, labeled a Stolen Identity Refund Fraud scheme by IRS agents, was relatively simple. In the first step, coconspirators stole personal identification information, such as social security numbers, names, and birthdates. With the stolen data in hand, other 1 For details about another coconspirator (who is not relevant to this appeal), see generally United States v. Flete- Garcia, 925 F.3d 17 (1st Cir. 2019). - 2 - conspirators executed the second stage, using the information to file fraudulent tax returns such that the IRS sent refund checks to addresses in Massachusetts.2 With checks in hand, the third stage began. And this is where Grullon and Cohen became useful by laundering the checks into cold hard cash through bank accounts at various banks in Massachusetts.3 The government put forward circumstantial evidence that, starting in October 2011, Cohen and Grullon conspired to deposit some of the checks into Cohen's Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts, known as IOLTAs, which are accounts that lawyers arrange to hold onto their clients' funds. See Mass. R. Prof. C. 1.15(e). To suspicious tellers, Cohen insisted the money came from his legal clients, but bank employees observed Cohen writing himself checks from the IOLTA account into which he had just deposited the alleged client funds. The checks' amounts approximated what he had just put into the bank. 2 The scheme primarily targeted people in Puerto Rico because the IRS does not require the Commonwealth's residents to file yearly tax returns. Because fewer Puerto Rico citizens file returns, the conspirators expected the IRS would flag fewer of their fraudulent returns as suspicious given the lesser chance the IRS would have multiple returns with the same …
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals