[00:00:00] Speaker 04:
The next case on calendar for argument is United States v. Sewell.

[00:00:33] Speaker 04:
Morning, counsel.

[00:00:35] Speaker 03:
Good morning, Your Honor. May it please the court, Devin Burstein on behalf of Mr. Sewell. I'll endeavor to save some time for rebuttal, but I'll watch my clock.

[00:00:44] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:00:45] Speaker 03:
Your Honors, I think if we're going to start with the wire fraud convictions, that there's really three quotes that can decide this case. The first quote comes from this court, the second quote from the district court, And the third quote from the government during closing arguments. So in Tulane, and I hope I'm pronouncing it somewhat correctly, this court held, cases in this and other circuits have recognized the unique characteristic of wire fraud, namely that it is complete when a transmission is made to further the overall scheme to defraud.

[00:01:25] Speaker 03:
Based on that, the district court instructed the jury, quote, The crime of wire fraud is complete when a wire transmission is made to further the overall scheme to defraud. Then the government argued, based on that language, when Sewell, when the forgiveness application was uploaded to Harvest and hit venture servers in one of those three states, and those were Arkansas, California, and Washington, that caused the wire transmission.

[00:01:56] Speaker 03:
And the crime was complete. You can't undo a crime you've already completed. Then they continued. The crime was complete the moment those forgiveness application caused the wire by uploading it through the internet to harvest. If the crime is complete, as this jury was told, as this court has held, and as the government argued, something that happened days and in certain counts weeks later can't then give evidence meet the jurisdictional interstate commerce requirement.

[00:02:33] Speaker 03:
The crime is already complete. If it can't be undone, if that's the government's position and we accept it, it can't be undone, well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

[00:02:43] Speaker 02:
Counsel, my hesitation with your argument is why can't the answer be Mr. Sewell set things in motion? You know, the intent of filing a loan forgiveness application allegedly with false statements, was for it to be accepted. So if you were correct, it would almost create an immunity that regardless, the moment you send it off, regardless of whatever happens later, whether there's any acceptance of it or any different transmissions, there's never an interstate jurisdictional element behind it.

[00:03:21] Speaker 02:
And I Don't think it can be that case.

[00:03:23] Speaker 03:
I agree with you, and let me answer why that's not the case. First of all, it doesn't create an immunity. The government gets to pick the charges. There's a host of charges they brought based on that conduct, and so there's no immunity. They could have charged a million different crimes based on that conduct. Theft from federal programs, tax evasion, all types of things. In almost all of the cases, and in this case, in fact... They could have proven that this was a – that wire fraud.

[00:03:55] Speaker 03:
There were three states. So in almost every case, all they have to do is you started an emotion, but before – you can't add to a complete crime. I mean that's what Tulianer says, so – and that's what the law is. So what would have to be is that that – all they would have had to show is that that transmission, in fact, went to either Arkansas or Washington. It didn't go through California. Yeah. because if it went through California, then we're in Bakerland from the 10th Circuit. So there's no, in fact, that's exactly what happened in Jinnian, which the government relies on.

[00:04:28] Speaker 03:
So the only wire transmission in Jinnian, so he goes and deposits his check in Jinnian, and then the wire goes to the Federal Reserve. That's the wire. That's when it's complete. Here, the government, not this particular government, but the government just It was a failure of proof. They called the agent to say to the jury, jury, it hit one of these three states.

[00:04:52] Speaker 03:
The next question, and sir, which one of those states?

[00:04:57] Speaker 03:
It hit Arkansas, wire fraud. It hit Washington, wire fraud. It hit California, no wire fraud.

[00:05:05] Speaker 01:
Did the wire ultimately reach Oregon?

[00:05:08] Speaker 03:
After the crime was complete.

[00:05:10] Speaker 01:
Well, why isn't the crime completed after it reaches Oregon? Because it's the SBA that is dispensing the loan funds, right? And the application is going to the SBA.

[00:05:19] Speaker 03:
So the reason it doesn't is because that's what this court has decided. So if the court wanted to take Tuliner and the Third Circuit has decided and all of those things, if the court wanted to take Tuliner on bank and reverse that, it could. But here's another point, Your Honor. And this occurred to me last night. We think about sufficiency of the evidence in terms of a reasonable jury, but really the test is this reasonable jury, right? So what did this jury hear?

[00:05:50] Speaker 03:
We're talking about Mr. Sewell's constitutional rights to have his jury instructed.

[00:05:58] Speaker 04:
Well, that's not the test. It's Construing all the facts. Right. In the light most favorable.

[00:06:05] Speaker 03:
Exactly.

[00:06:06] Speaker 04:
Whether a reasonable jury. It's not this jury. We don't target the particular jury at issue. We look at whether a reasonable jury would have convicted. We don't target toward this jury.

[00:06:18] Speaker 03:
Maybe I misspoke. A reasonable jury under all the facts and a reasonable jury who's we presume that juries follows instructions. We all agree on that. That's black letter law on every circuit. This jury was instructed, so any reasonable jury with this instruction that the crime is complete at the moment Sewell instituted the transmission, that's at ER 78. Any jury given that instruction could not find beyond a reasonable doubt an interstate commerce, the interstate commerce element.

[00:06:59] Speaker 03:
Any jury, as you just said, Judge Rawlinson, with the facts and circumstances in the light most favorable to the government, in this case, no reasonable jury could have convicted because it said one of three different states.

[00:07:12] Speaker 01:
Counsel, I'd like to return to the statutory text of the wire fraud provision, Section 1343. It says whoever having devised or intending to devise any scheme to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire Right. Communication in interstate or foreign commerce. So why hasn't at least your client caused to be transmitted the subsequent leg of the communication?

[00:07:39] Speaker 03:
Right. So that's what the government relies on. They rely on the subsequent transmissions from Harvest to the SBA. We all agree that that's what they rely on. There's a number of problems with that, both factually and legally. Let's start with the legal problems to that. Number one, the crime was complete. I keep coming back to it because it's an essential factor.

[00:08:03] Speaker 03:
You can't do something subsequent to the completion of the crime. So whatever harvested later doesn't matter as a matter of law. That's one of the legal reasons.

[00:08:12] Speaker 04:
But counsel, it's complete because he's caused it to be transmitted. That portion of it is complete, and that doesn't negate reliance on the other destinations.

[00:08:27] Speaker 03:
That's not what this jury was told, Your Honor.

[00:08:29] Speaker 04:
That's just not what this... No, the jury was told it's complete when he sent the application because he caused it at that point. You have to look at all the jury instructions together. I agree. And the district court read the definition of wire fraud, which means, as my colleague said, to mail or cause to be sent or cause to be sent. So... That part of it, I think, gives you problems in terms of your argument.

[00:09:00] Speaker 03:
I don't think so for a number of reasons. One, I've had, and we can talk about it more if the court has questions, but you can't do something after the crime is complete. The second one is that Sewell didn't cause Harvest to wire the applications to the SBA. That's just not factually on this record true. Harvest could have mailed the applications. It could have hand-delivered the applications. In those cases, there would have been no interstate wire for the government to appoint to.

[00:09:33] Speaker 03:
He didn't cause them to do that. The method that Harvest chose to use to deliver the applications to the SBA belonged entirely to Harvest's internal processes. Sewell had no knowledge of what they would do, and he had no control over their procedures. Can we look briefly at ER 13 through 14?

[00:10:00] Speaker 03:
Then you'll see emails from Harvest to Sewell about the application's underlying counts four and five. And you will see that these applications, that the emails go, they start on July 29th, and then they continue if we go to 4-14 to August 15th. That means we know that for at least those two counts, the wire transmission was complete two weeks while Harvest is reviewing, asking for documents, doing whatever they do to say that that his wire two weeks earlier, his wire transmission to Harvest, caused them two weeks later to submit it electronically to the SBA, that's just not a fact.

[00:10:53] Speaker 02:
Well, did Mr. Sewell know that Harvest was the intermediary in the interactions with the SBA?

[00:11:00] Speaker 03:
That could probably be inferred from the record.

[00:11:02] Speaker 02:
Right. And so in that instance, the fact that Harvest is standing as the intermediary and Mr. Sewell transmits an application, at some point Mr. Sewell is aware that this is going to be forwarded on to the SBA for approval or not. So what difference does it make the two weeks later or the manner of transmission?

[00:11:21] Speaker 03:
Oh, the manner of transmission is everything because that's the only interstate wire here. So if Sewell doesn't know they're going to wire it, and that's not foreseeable, they'll wire it rather than – Why is it not foreseeable? Because there's no evidence in the record as to how Harvest is going to send it to the – or no, that's not true. There is.

[00:11:40] Speaker 02:
I mean this keeps going – I think it's collapsing on the same argument that you're trying to make that something is complete without causing a chain of events to happen, causing the transmission to occur is not complete in your mind. But I think you're arguing against facts in the record that support the government's theory about causing it to be transmitted.

[00:12:01] Speaker 03:
Well, it depends – right. I mean I think it depends on what this court decides Tulinor meant. about it's complete when the moment when a transmission is sent. If it's complete when we say... Caused to be sent.

[00:12:13] Speaker 04:
Sent or caused to be sent. You seem to keep eliding that part of it.

[00:12:20] Speaker 03:
Right, so that would mean it essentially becomes not a unique characteristic of wire fraud. So when Tulane says the unique characteristic of wire fraud is that it's complete the moment it's sent, which is what Tulane says... But you're leaving out an element of the wire fraud statute

[00:12:37] Speaker 04:
What causes to be sent?

[00:12:40] Speaker 03:
I don't know that I'm leaving it out so much as this court left it out in its holding, which I quoted directly. So, I mean, I don't know. I mean, that's the state of the law that we're dealing with.

[00:12:50] Speaker 04:
We're looking at sufficiency of the evidence.

[00:12:54] Speaker 03:
Right.

[00:12:54] Speaker 04:
We're looking at the instructions that were given, the elements of the statute.

[00:13:00] Speaker 03:
Right.

[00:13:01] Speaker 04:
And, you know.

[00:13:03] Speaker 03:
And this court's case law.

[00:13:04] Speaker 04:
And this court's case law. But this court's case law cannot eliminate what the elements of the statute and what the jury was instructed, because we're determining whether or not there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict.

[00:13:19] Speaker 03:
No, I understand the standard, Your Honor, and that's our position, is that here without that Sewell, A, it was complete, and B, he didn't cause it because he had no control, no knowledge of how Harvest would then pass his application on weeks later to the SBA.

[00:13:41] Speaker 04:
Did you want to say some time for rebuttal? I think we understand your argument.

[00:13:45] Speaker 03:
I agree. Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:13:59] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors. Hannah Cook for the United States.

[00:14:02] Speaker 00:
Did you try this case? No, Your Honor.

[00:14:07] Speaker 00:
I'd like to start with the language of the statute where Judge Tung started, which is that this statute criminalizes a scheme to defraud where the defendant causes a wire to be sent or sends the wire. This case was consistently charged and tried on a caused to be sent. The indictment itself alleges that the submission of these documents is caused an interstate wire.

[00:14:40] Speaker 00:
And that interstate wire, we don't even have to get into the issue of where the harvest server is because defendant is sending fraudulent documents to the SBA. It's an SBA form. It says SBA right on it. He's uploading it into an online portal through his bank, exchanging online documents with his bank, and then the bank submits it electronically to to the SBA, and depending on the particular count, Virginia or Oregon.

[00:15:08] Speaker 04:
Counsel, what's your response to opposing counsel's argument that Mr. Sewell had no idea as to how the form was going to be transmitted by Harvest?

[00:15:20] Speaker 00:
I don't think that, I think that viewing the evidence in the light most reason, excuse me, in the light most favorable to the verdict, there's plenty of evidence that Mr. Sewell would have understood that a form electronically submitted would be further electronically submitted to the SBA. And then when the bank would electronically receive information back, it would then electronically place funds in his bank account, which is what happened. And I'd point this court to Ginnian, where specifically there, the defendant was arguing, well, I didn't know that my bank, my California bank, was going to send an interstate wire to the Federal Reserve in Texas.

[00:15:59] Speaker 00:
And this court said, you don't have to know the specifics of the interstate wire. It just needs to be foreseeable. And in the check clearing world, interstate wires are common. They go to these federal reserves, and that's part of how it's processed. In the same way here, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the reason why the SBA was using these local banks was to move funds as efficiently as possible directly to consumers. They were doing this through primarily electronic transfers, electronic system processing.

[00:16:36] Speaker 00:
And quite frankly, at this point in our digital age, all loans involve some amount of information transfer between banks and the SBA electronically. We all use online banking today, and I think a jury could reasonably infer that when you're submitting electronic documents, your bank is going to use that electronic file to transfer it to the decision-maker and and then continue using electronic information on the way back.

[00:17:03] Speaker 01:
Counsel, your friend on the other side relies on United States versus Tulaner, saying that the crime is complete upon uploading of the application to the Harvest application. What's your view on that? How is this case distinguishable from Tulaner?

[00:17:19] Speaker 00:
I don't think Tulaner says anything about this case because Tulaner is specifically interpreting what it means to be complete and I think there's some fuzzy language around what people are meaning when they say complete, and that's where this is coming from. Tulaner is about a sentencing enhancement, excuse me, a sentencing reduction in the guidelines for a partially completed offense. Specifically in Tulaner, the defendant had tried to defraud a metals mining corporation by getting 12 platinum discs.

[00:17:50] Speaker 00:
And then the defrauded party had said, well, that's a lot of money. How about we send them to you in several shipments? We'll do. And then they negotiated over how many shipments. And they said, okay, we'll send you three shipments of four discs each.

[00:18:07] Speaker 00:
As it turned out, the metals manufacturer then got wise that this seemed sketchy, and to use a, sorry, not very technical term, and brought in the FBI. And the FBI did a controlled fake buy of the four discs and then arrested the defendant. And the defendant argued that for the purposes of loss calculation, he should be held responsible only for four discs under the partially completed offense provision of the guidelines because he had, in fact, only tried to pay for four of the discs.

[00:18:41] Speaker 00:
not the full 12 that he was seeking when he had sent the wire.

[00:18:45] Speaker 01:
So it didn't address the cause to be transmitted.

[00:18:47] Speaker 00:
No, it had nothing to do with that. It was entirely about essentially when defendant sent the wire, should he be responsible for the four or the 12?

[00:18:55] Speaker 00:
That's not an issue here because that guideline wasn't applied. That guideline didn't have any use. This was about whether, and it's true that the government did use the term complete here to discuss the completion of the actus reus. And I think that's clear when you look at the text of the government's closing argument as a whole. What the government was saying is his part is complete. He's done his action when he hits submit, which I think is intuitively true, that he's causing the wire to be submitted when he hits submit on the application and and hits go to harvest, that's the actus reus.

[00:19:42] Speaker 00:
That's the date that we alleged as the submission that caused a wire. And so I think that's what the government was trying to get at there.

[00:19:49] Speaker 02:
And so it wouldn't matter if the SBA accepted or denied his application. The crime was complete when he caused the transmission to take place with the application itself.

[00:20:00] Speaker 00:
That's correct. Wire fraud doesn't require the successful receipt of funds. It's about the scheme to defraud.

[00:20:06] Speaker 00:
And I'd like to just very quickly raise to my friend on the other side's point about the time difference. The time differences in wire fraud cases or even more so in mail fraud cases are often weeks or months. It takes time for schemes to come to fruition. And I'd point this court specifically to the tank case, United States versus or Tonka, maybe T-A-N-K-E. It's 753 F third 1296.

[00:20:35] Speaker 00:
And it talks about a lag in time for mail fraud. There, in particular, the defendant had perpetrated his scheme. It was an embezzlement scheme in that case. And then he had sent a fake invoice later attempting to get some additional funds and justify his embezzlement. And the defendant argued, sort of like the defendant is here, well, I'd already gotten the money. I'd already embezzled it.

[00:21:01] Speaker 00:
The fact that I, three months later, sent a letter...

[00:21:05] Speaker 00:
shouldn't put me on the hook for mail fraud for the embezzled funds. And this court said, no, it's about whether the scheme is complete. And that can be, and this court talks at length in there about when is a scheme complete? And is it when you get the funds? Is it when there's lulling? How long is too long for lulling? And in that particular case, it contrasted the defendant in Tank, Tonki, sorry, I'm not sure, with a a case involving a Ukrainian fraudster who had conducted a separate fraud and then had two or three years later transferred the funds to the United States.

[00:21:42] Speaker 00:
And there the court had said, well, look, that wire transferring the funds of a completed scheme two or three years later, that's too long to sort of hook it into the same scheme. But a few months later, We think that that is consistent with the scheme as envisioned by the perpetrator. And here I think it's clear that the sending of the applications to Harvest, excuse me, to the SBA is obviously part of the scheme. The defendant can't get any money or he can't get the forgiveness of the loans if it doesn't get to the SBA.

[00:22:14] Speaker 00:
That's who he's really sending this to. Harvest is, as Judge Tung pointed out, I believe, or it may have been Judge Sanchez, an agent functional. He knows it's going to be sent on to the SBA. That's how he can get what he wants.

[00:22:28] Speaker 00:
So I think this case is much more like those and the fact that it takes some amount of time for his agent to sort of fulfill the purpose doesn't particularly hold much water here.

[00:22:39] Speaker 02:
Can I have you switch gears for a moment about the two-level enhancement for under-sentencing? Yes. I wanted to ask you what your views were about what the evidence was establishing Sewell's control or influence over Smith?

[00:23:01] Speaker 00:
Certainly. So I think the evidence is throughout the trial, but I'd really point the court to looking at, there's a series of text messages on March 22nd of, I want to say it's 2020, but let me, um, try and look really quickly, but there's a series of text messages where they're bringing in, she brings in almost a million dollars in cash, um, some of it from the first PPP loans. And we introduced the text messages showing that she's texting with Mr. Sewell saying, okay, this is how much they're saying when the bank counts it, how much cash.

[00:23:44] Speaker 00:
And he says, have them count. She says, do you want to have them count it in front of me? He's like, yes, check the bag. Check, are you sure? Have you seen them do it? And then she's supposed to have the wire be sent to purchase the Arkansas house. That's why they brought all this cash in is so it can be deposited. And then a wire can be sent to purchase a home and defendant's name in Arkansas. And he tells her, check the numbers on the wire, quadruple check them.

[00:24:10] Speaker 00:
That's not someone checking with their business partner. That's someone directing an agent. And you can see this throughout the text messages with, various parties where when she'll talk to the accountant and she'll say, I told him I needed to talk to you. Do you want to pursue an RRF application? Are we ready to submit these tax returns? And I would point out as well that I would point this court to the Doe case.

[00:24:40] Speaker 00:
The case, sorry, the texts are March 22nd of 2021. But in the Doe case, which is 778 F3rd 814 from this court in 2015, This court says, look, we talked about control as sort of the supervisor element, but there's four different ways you can have this guidelines enhancement, right? It's an organizer, leader, manager, or supervisor.

[00:25:04] Speaker 00:
I mean, Joe, and again, later in this court's case in United States v. Vinge, which is 85F41285 from 2023, they say, well, look, you do need some degree of control in the sense that, but it can be that you're directing or organizing control. And that can be as simple as in Joe it was the defendant was basically sending out people to do various drug transactions and keeping track of where the money was going. And that's exactly what Mr. Sewell is doing here.

[00:25:32] Speaker 02:
Did the district court reference these text messages or what did the district court say as indicia of influence, if not control?

[00:25:42] Speaker 00:
The district court referenced an interaction at a bank, which I think is a reference to those text messages when she was at the bank. Let me see if I can get the exact – I know it's in our brief, the exact language that he used, and I don't want to just stand here while I'm flipping through paper, but the court specifically references the interactions at the bank, which is when she's texting him while she's at the bank, as well as with the accountant. And I think that it is circumstantially relevant here that to the extent that he's directing this enterprise, right, this entire scheme of the wire fraud, the various deceptions on the SBA across three different loan programs, he's always the one making the final decisions, right?

[00:26:27] Speaker 00:
They might be getting forms and whatnot or profit and loss statements from Smith, but the person who actually signs the forms, the person who actually goes, the person who actually says, I'll take my chances with the accountant is Sewell. And I think what the district court's referencing there is that it's reasonable that where we have this testimony from the accountant, it's obviously hard to see inside a partnership when the two parties, one of whom is unfortunately deceased and one of whom is the defendant, it's hard to sort of get, other than through this sort of circumstantial evidence, how that partnership worked.

[00:27:00] Speaker 00:
But I think that it shows from the accountant's experience that she's serving that sort of lower level functionary role and that he's serving as a decision maker role, that when she, that he, that is, that, she has to check with him when decisions are made. And so I think that's really what the district court, both when it references the conversations with the accountant and the bank, I think that's what it's relying on. Okay.

[00:27:20] Speaker 01:
Counsel, do we need to rely on the guidelines commentary to decide the sentencing issue? Or can we rely just on the plain text of the guidelines and what the guidelines words mean?

[00:27:32] Speaker 00:
Oh, I think you can absolutely rely on the plain text of the guidelines. I think if you think about someone who's an organizer or a leader of an enterprise, The person who's got $2.4 million of cash in his bedroom closet and a million-dollar house in Arkansas paid for with funds, who's making the decisions, who's talking to the accountants, who's saying, I'll take my chances, who's being texted, do you want them to count it in front of me? And he's saying that quadruple check that it's right. I think that you're there without looking at any commentary.

[00:28:02] Speaker 01:
Counsel, can I turn briefly to the jury instructions issue related to conspiracy to commit wire fraud? So the judge, as I understand it, gives two distinct instructions. The first he says, the jury needs to find that two or more people agree to commit wire fraud as charged in the superseding indictment. But then later he says, you must find that there was a plan to commit at least one of the crimes alleged in the indictment as an object of a conspiracy. So the jury instructions then are broader in the second formulation.

[00:28:34] Speaker 01:
Doesn't that pit the two jury instructions together? against one another? And isn't there error there?

[00:28:41] Speaker 00:
I don't think so, Your Honor, and certainly not plain error. As Judge Rawlinson mentioned earlier, we have to look at the jury instructions as a whole, right? And so when the judge is talking about the—and it's using the model instruction from this court, I would point out—that it says you need to find a conspiracy— to commit the crime alleged as an object of the conspiracy. Well, if you look at the indictment, I believe it's, let me make sure I've got the right page here.

[00:29:14] Speaker 00:
I brought it up just for this page.

[00:29:18] Speaker 01:
It would have been, it would have been error if the jury jury had relied on the broader formulation, right. And found that there was an agreement to commit something other than wire fraud, that that would have been error if they had done that. Right.

[00:29:30] Speaker 00:
I think, Certainly, but I don't think there's any evidence that that happened here, both because I think the jury instructions were clear and indeed the jury had the indictment with them. And although I know my friend points to the object of the conspiracy language, but literally in the paragraph before, paragraph 20 of the indictment, what it says is that the defendant and UCC1 knowingly conspired with and agreed with each other to commit the offense of wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. 135.

[00:30:00] Speaker 00:
And then it goes on to define what wire fraud is. So, I mean, the count is called conspiracy to commit wire fraud. I don't think there's any reason to believe that the jury would have been confused in some way into thinking that it would that it was looking at some other crime with the surrounding indicia that the district court is repeatedly saying for this count conspiracy to commit wire fraud. I think a reasonable jury would intuit that the language referred to wire fraud.

[00:30:31] Speaker 04:
All right. Thank you, counsel.

[00:30:32] Speaker 00:
Thank you so much. We'd ask that you affirm.

[00:30:35] Speaker 03:
Thank you, Your Honors. Going to the aggravated role enhancement, Judge Tong, I read your recent concurrence on minor roles. So I think I know where your question was going about that. You don't need to – well, first of all, I think there's lots of interesting things to talk about. I don't really have time to talk about all of them with your concurrence and your question.

[00:31:08] Speaker 03:
It's an argument I've raised before, so I understand it well. I think there's lots of different points. But what I would point to is you don't have to rely – even if you disagree with relying on the commentary, you do are bound by the sports case law. right, as a prior panel, and Whitney specifically holds that there must be control. So you don't have to look to the commentary, but you are bound by Whitney as a three-judge panel, and Whitney requires control. Everything my friend said on the other side misses one fundamental point, is that this is not just business partners.

[00:31:45] Speaker 03:
These are essentially husband and wife, a common-law couple who's been together for a long, long time. I've been married for 18 years.

[00:31:52] Speaker 03:
I check with my wife about all of our major financial decisions. She checks with me. If I was going to the bank with $900,000 in cash and their count was coming up wrong, I would certainly message her about it, and she would message me about it. But that doesn't mean I control her, nor does she control me. All of the text messages, we embrace them. Please look carefully at the text messages, as Judge Rawlinson says, as a whole. This is a couple who are also business partners, but one doesn't control the other.

[00:32:24] Speaker 03:
And I'll point to the very last text message. She says, I'm taking like $150,000. I'm fine with that on my own. There's no question. She's telling her partner, her spouse, I'm taking $150,000 to the bank. A courier doesn't do that. This is not about hierarchy. This is a couple of love and respect checking with each other about what they're doing. That's not aggravated role. I'm happy to answer any questions about the jury instructions. I'm over my time.

[00:32:53] Speaker 04:
Thank you, counsel. Thank you to both counsel for your helpful arguments. The case just argued is admitted for decision by the court.