U.S. v. Lee

Record contained sufficient evidence to support jury’s guilty verdict on wire fraud charge stemming from defendant’s scheme to import from S. Korea fully-assembled turbo blowers, where defendant represented that said blowers were made in U.S.A. for purpose of obtaining funds under Recovery Act for sales of said blowers. While defendant argued that govt. improperly amended indictment by presenting evidence of misrepresentations beyond defendant’s “Buy American” certifications, govt. proved that defendant knew that his blowers were made in S. Korea and lied about that fact, and additional misrepresentations concerned same elaborate scheme to defraud govt. Also, govt. rejected defendant’s contention that blowers manufactured in S. Korea complied with Buy American certification. Moreover, record similarly supported defendant’s smuggling convictions, where defendant had mislabeled country of origin for its imported blowers. Too, Dist. Ct. could properly reduce defendant’s initial sentence of 20-month incarceration to 12-month incarceration pursuant to defendant’s motion under Rule 35(a), where: (1) basis for reduction was Dist. Ct.’s error in using defendant’s gross revenue arising out of sales of its blower, instead of his net profits arising out of said sales, when determining appropriate guideline range; and (2) said error would have warranted vacatur of original sentence on appeal.