United States v. Mobley, No. 19-3122 (10th Cir. 2020)
Annotate this CaseIn April 2014, a pregnant Bogdana Alexandrovna Osipova took her young son and daughter to Russia, leaving behind ongoing divorce proceedings in Kansas. By doing so, Osipova deprived Brian Mobley, her soon-to-be ex-husband and the father of her daughter and unborn child, of his joint-custody rights under the Kansas court’s temporary custodial order. In Russia, Osipova gave birth to a girl and instituted her own divorce proceedings. The Russian court ordered Mobley to pay monthly child support. But by then the Kansas court had already awarded Mobley full custody of their two daughters, and he steadfastly refused Osipova’s requests that he pay the Russian court-ordered child support. Eventually, in September 2017, Osipova returned alone to the United States on an ill-fated quest to modify the Kansas order. The FBI promptly arrested Osipova, and she was incarcerated for international parental kidnapping and extortionate interstate communications. A jury sentenced Osipova to the statutory maximum three years on the parental-kidnapping conviction, and to seven years on each extortionate-communications convictions, all to run concurrently. On appeal, Osipova argued the federal district judge should have dismissed the indictment and recused himself from her sentencing. Osipova also argued that insufficient evidence supports her 18 U.S.C. 875(b) convictions and that the court erred by awarding Mobley restitution for attorney’s fees he incurred attempting to obtain physical custody of their two daughters. The Tenth Circuit rejected Osipova's dismissal and recusal arguments, but concurred that insufficient evidence supported the extortionate communications charges. Further, the restitution order was unauthorized by law. The latter part of the trial court's judgment was vacated and the matter remanded for resentencing.
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