Background
Defendants Blade Bai, Bowen Hu, and Tairan Shi participated in a scheme to launder Target gift cards purchased by telephone scammers. They were convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering. At sentencing, the district court calculated a base offense level based on laundered funds totaling approximately twenty-five hundred thousand dollars and applied various enhancements, including a sophisticated laundering enhancement.
The court’s reasoning
The panel held that the district court did not err in considering intended loss as part of the value of laundered funds under Section two S one point one. However, the court found that the district court improperly imposed a two-level enhancement for sophisticated laundering under Section two S one point one subsection b three. The plain language requires the court to actually apply the two-level increase under subsection b two B for conviction under Section nineteen fifty-six before applying the sophisticated laundering enhancement. Since the court applied the four-level increase for being in the business of laundering funds instead, the condition for the sophisticated enhancement was not met.
What it means going forward
Defendants must be resentenced with the sophisticated laundering enhancement removed, requiring a recalculation of their guideline range without the two-level increase.