United States v. Akop Daniyelyan

MEMORANDUM

Akop Daniyelyan appeals his judgment of conviction and sentence for one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and one count of bank fraud. Grayr Yerikyan appeals his sentence for one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, one count of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit unlawful production of identification documents. We affirm.

1. Sufficient evidence supported Daniyelyan’s conviction for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and for bank fraud. The evidence showed that, consistent with a check-kiting scheme described by a co-conspirator, Daniyelyan opened bank accounts in the name of a fraudulent business, used debit cards of other fraudulent businesses to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of cigarettes, purchased the cigarettes by drawing on accounts whose balances were artificially inflated and stayed in close communication with other members of the conspiracy while purchasing these cigarettes. See United States v. Chung, 659 F.3d 815, 823 (9th Cir.2011) (“We review the sufficiency of the evidence de novo to determine whether, ‘viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the…