United States v. Gary Tipton, United States of America v. Edward Purmort

56 F.3d 1009 95-1 USTC P 50,288 UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Gary TIPTON, Defendant-Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Edward PURMORT, Defendant-Appellant. Nos. 94-50201, 94-50210. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted Jan. 10, 1995. Decided May 24, 1995. As Amended on Denial of Rehearing and Rejection of Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc July 21, 1995. * Roger S. Hanson, Santa Ana, CA, for defendant-appellant Tipton. David J. Macher, La Habra, CA, for defendant-appellant Purmort. Michael Terrell, Asst. U.S. Atty., Los Angeles, CA, for plaintiff-appellee. Appeals from the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Before: CANBY, and NOONAN, Circuit Judges, and KING, ** District Judge. Opinion by Judge CANBY; Dissent by Judge NOONAN. CANBY, Circuit Judge: 1 Gary Tipton and Edward Eugene Purmort appeal their convictions for conspiracy to structure financial transactions in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 and for structuring a financial transaction in violation of 31 U.S.C. Sec. 5324 (a)(3). We affirm. I. 2 At trial, the government presented evidence establishing the following facts:…

Opinion by Judge CANBY; Dissent by Judge NOONAN.

Gary Tipton and Edward Eugene Purmort appeal their convictions for conspiracy to structure financial transactions in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 and for structuring a financial transaction in violation of 31 U.S.C. § 5324 (a)(3). We affirm.

I.

At trial, the government presented evidence establishing the following facts: In late 1987, Ahd Haddad and his wife Christine Haddad opened a business account for their “Stereo and Video Stop” store at the Loma Linda branch of Security Pacific National Bank. At the time, Tipton was the operations manager of the bank and Purmort was the bank’s branch manager.

Both Tipton and Purmort participated in quarterly training sessions of bank employees. At the training sessions, employees learned that if a person came to the bank to buy cashier’s checks with more than $10,000 dollars in currency on a single day, a Currency Transaction Report (CTR) would have to be filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Employees also learned that if a husband and wife had a joint account and *1011 came in with more than $10,000 dollars on a single day, a CTR would have to be filed. Tipton and Purmort both…

dissenting:

The statute governing this case is 31 U.S.C. § 5324 (a)(3), which provides:

The statutory crossreferenee to § 5325 does not appear to be relevant here. The statutory crossreference to § 5313 is to authorization of the Secretary of the Treasury to prescribe the reporting of certain monetary transactions by financial institutions; under the authority of this statute, the Secretary has prescribed the reporting of transactions in currency of more than $10,000. 31 C.F.R. § 103.22 (a)(1). The regulations specify:

The Supreme Court has authoritatively construed the statute in Ratzlaf v. United States, — U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 655 , 126 L.Ed.2d 615 (1994). The holding of this case is that for a defendant to be guilty of violating § 5324(a)(3), “the jury had to find he knew the structuring in which he engaged was unlawful.” Id. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 663 . The reasoning that leads to this conclusion makes clear that it is not enough to establish guilt to prove that the defendant knew “that a financial institution must report currency transactions in excess of $10,000 and his intention to avoid such reporting.” Id. at -, 114 S.Ct. at 657 . It must be proved that the defendant’s…