United States v. Marijan Cvjeticanin


NOT PRECEDENTIAL UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _____________ No. 19-1599 _____________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. MARIJAN CVJETICANIN, Appellant _____________ On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey D.C. No. 3-14-cr-00274-001 District Judge: Honorable Michael A. Shipp _____________ Submitted Pursuant to Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) November 19, 2019 _____________ Before: CHAGARES, MATEY, and FUENTES, Circuit Judges. (Filed: November 21, 2019) _____________________ OPINION _____________________  This disposition is not an opinion of the full court and, pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7, does not constitute binding precedent. CHAGARES, Circuit Judge. Marijan Cvjeticanin was convicted of nine counts of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341, based on a scheme to defraud clients through false billing practices. Cvjeticanin now appeals the District Court’s denial of his two motions for a new trial. We will affirm. I. We write for the parties and so recount only the facts necessary to our decision. Cvjeticanin worked as a paralegal and then as an attorney at a New York immigration law firm. As both a paralegal and as an attorney, Cvjeticanin was responsible for preparing applications for permanent residency for foreign citizen- employees of two corporate clients (including ADP) with operations in the United States. In order for corporate employers to apply for permanent residency for their foreign citizen-employees, they must demonstrate a need to hire a foreign worker for a specific position and show that there are no minimally qualified United States citizens available to fill those positions. To meet these requirements, employers must first engage in recruiting by placing print advertisements for the positions in the geographic locations where the positions are based. The law firm that employed Cvjeticanin used the services of third-party advertising agencies to place the required print advertisements. The Second Superseding Indictment alleged that Cvjeticanin defrauded two of his law firm’s corporate clients by, inter alia, convincing his law firm to replace its existing advertising agency with Flowerson Holdings, Inc., which was secretly owned and controlled by Cvjeticanin, and then billing the clients for hundreds of thousands of 2 dollars’ worth of advertising placements that Flowerson and Cvjeticanin never placed. On June 29, 2015, the jury found Cvjeticanin guilty on all nine counts of mail fraud. The District Court denied Cvjeticanin’s motion for new trial, among other post- trial motions, and we affirmed. United States v. Cvjeticanin, 704 F. App’x 89, 94 (3d Cir. 2017), cert. denied, 138 S. Ct. 939 (2018), reh’g denied, 138 S. Ct. 1347 (2018). In June 2018, Cvjeticanin moved again for a new trial in two separate motions, which the District Court denied, for the reasons set forth in the court’s March 6, 2019 Memorandum Opinion. This timely appeal followed. II.1 Proceeding pro se, Cvjeticanin challenges the District Court’s denial of his two motions for a new trial on numerous distinct and overlapping grounds. Before discussing the merits of Cvjeticanin’s motions, we first explain why many of the claims pressed in Cvjeticanin’s second motion were ...

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