United States v. Constantine Kallas

AMENDED MEMORANDUM

A jury convicted Defendant-Appellant Constantine Kallas, a former attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), of 36 counts of conspiracy, bribery, obstruction, immigration fraud, false statements, aggravated identity theft, workers’ compensation fraud, and tax evasion. The convictions arose from a scheme in which Kallas and his wife and co-defendant, Maria Kallas, extracted payments from illegal aliens in exchange for assistance in obtaining immigration benefits for the aliens. The district court sentenced Kallas to a within-Guidelines sentence of 212 months of imprisonment and ordered him to pay $296,865.45 in restitution for the workers’ compensation fraud convictions.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and 18 U.S.C. § 3742 and affirm Kallas’ convictions and sentence.

1. The government presented sufficient evidence to support Kallas’ convictions for Counts 2-5 and 7 because, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of bribery. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 , 99 S.Ct. 2781 , 61 L.Ed.2d…