United States v. Claudio Dibe

In 2012, Claudio Uche Dibe pleaded guilty to 15 counts of wire fraud without reaching a plea agreement with the government. The district court sentenced him to 120 months in prison, which was below the appropriate U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range. Dibe now appeals on the ground that his sentence would have been even lower if the district court had considered Dibe’s ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim as a mitigating factor under 18 U.S.C. § 3553 (a). For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Underlying offense

For years, Dibe was part of a scheme to defraud victims through false and fraudulent pretenses. Coparticipants in Nigeria contacted individuals in the United States by email and telephone, falsely telling them that they had won a lottery or were named in an inheritance. Dibe represented himself as diplomat “John Brown” and told the victims that they needed to send money for fees and costs before they could receive the promised lottery prize or inheritance.

The victims’ money, however, was kept by Dibe and his coparticipants for their own benefit. Records reflect that more than one million dollars was…