Background
Defendants Blade Bai, Bowen Hu, and Tairan Shi participated in a scheme to launder Target gift cards purchased by telephone scam victims. 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 two point five million dollars and applied various enhancements including a sophisticated laundering enhancement.
The court’s reasoning
The panel reviewed the loss amount calculation de novo and found no error in including intended loss. Regarding the sophisticated laundering enhancement, the court interpreted the plain language of the guidelines to require that subsection b two B be actually applied before subsection b three can trigger. Since the district court applied the greater four-level enhancement under subsection b two C instead of the two-level enhancement under subsection b two B, the condition for subsection b three was not met. The court also affirmed the manager enhancements and the denial of the minor participant adjustment based on the record.
What it means going forward
The case is remanded for a limited resentencing to adjust the guideline computation by removing the improper sophisticated laundering enhancement. A plenary resentencing is not required.