United States v. Dawood Momeni

Dawood Momeni traveled to Hawaii on eight occasions between February, 1986 and November, 1987, and charged his hotel and miscellaneous expenses to credit cards not owned by him. He appeals his conviction and sentence on multiple counts of mail, wire and credit fraud.

I

Momeni argues there was insufficient evidence he was the person involved in the events at the hotels alleged in counts two, five and seven.

The government presented “signature” evidence suggesting that each of the hotel stays involved the same individual. Some combination of the following characteristics appeared with respect to each of the challenged counts: the perpetrator gave the same fictitious address and/or fictitious telephone number; tips on credit card vouchers were in such amounts that the totals rounded off to even dollar amounts (e.g., bill of $6.87 plus $1.13 tip equals $8.00); the perpetrator purchased jewelry from the hotel jewelry shop and charged it to his room; the perpetrator departed prior to the scheduled end of his stay without checking out. Evidence of this kind may be sufficient alone to establish a perpetrator’s identity. See United States v. Milhollan, 599 F.2d 518, 524-25 (3d Cir.1979)…