Background
Lilian Giang owned and managed Able Temp Agency, a staffing business in Massachusetts. Between 2015 and 2019, she made over seven hundred cash withdrawals totaling more than three point seven million dollars, often just below the ten thousand dollar reporting threshold. Giang paid workers in unreported cash and submitted false payroll information to the Internal Revenue Service and her workers’ compensation insurer, Travelers Indemnity Company. This conduct resulted in lower tax bills and insurance premiums. Giang was convicted on four counts of failure to collect or pay over employment taxes and one count of mail fraud. She appealed, challenging the admission of evidence regarding her cash withdrawals, the refusal to give an implicit bias jury instruction, the propriety of instructions on tax obligations and good faith, and the sufficiency of the evidence for the mail fraud conviction.
The court’s reasoning
The First Circuit reviewed the admission of evidence regarding cash structuring under an abuse of discretion standard, finding the evidence intrinsic to the charged offenses and relevant to Giang’s intent. The court held that Rule four hundred four B did not apply because the evidence was intrinsic to the crime. Regarding the implicit bias instruction, the court found the district court’s voir dire and general instructions substantially covered the requested instruction’s purpose. On the good faith instruction, the court acknowledged potential error in equating lack of good faith with a purpose to deceive but deemed the error harmless given the strong evidence of willfulness. Finally, the court found the evidence sufficient to support the mail fraud conviction, noting that Giang could reasonably foresee the mailing of insurance adjustment letters based on her prior dealings with the insurer.
After considering each of the purported errors Giang identifies, we AFFIRM the district court.
United States v. Giang, 24-1829 (1st Cir. 2026)
What it means going forward
The decision reinforces that evidence of uncharged structuring conduct is admissible in tax fraud cases when intrinsic to the scheme. It clarifies that general jury instructions on impartiality may suffice to mitigate bias concerns without a specific implicit bias instruction. The ruling also establishes that instructional errors regarding good faith may be deemed harmless if the evidence of willfulness is overwhelming.
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