United States v. Jidoefor, No. 22-3235 (8th Cir. 2024)
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A Nigerian citizen, Okwuchukwu Jidoefor, pleaded guilty to mail fraud. As part of the plea agreement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota agreed to send a letter to immigration authorities outlining Jidoefor’s cooperation in prior cases. After the sentencing hearing, the Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) sent the agreed letter to immigration authorities. However, due to an internal mistake, the U.S. Attorney sent a second letter stating the first letter was not the office’s official position. Upon discovering the mistake, the U.S. Attorney sent a third letter retracting the second letter and reaffirming the first one. Jidoefor moved to remedy the government’s breach of the plea agreement, which the district court denied, finding the third letter an adequate remedy. Jidoefor appealed this decision.
The District Court for the District of Minnesota found that the government's third letter was an adequate remedy for the breach of the plea agreement. Jidoefor appealed this decision, arguing that the district court erred in not providing a remedy. He also separately appealed the district court’s sentence and its order for restitution.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court's decision. The court found that the government's third letter, which retracted the second letter and reaffirmed the first one, was an adequate remedy for the breach of the plea agreement. The court also found that the district court did not err in calculating Nationwide’s losses and imposing the $22,028 restitution obligation. Furthermore, the court dismissed Jidoefor's challenge to the length of his sentence as moot, as he had already served the sentence.
Court Description: [Loken, Author, with Smith, Chief Judge, and Colloton, Circuit Judge] Criminal case - Criminal law. While serving a term of supervised release imposed on a prior bank fraud conviction, defendant, a Nigerian citizen, participated in a scheme to defraud auto insurance companies by staging crashes and submitting claims for unnecessary or nonexistent chiropractic services. He pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and to violating a condition of his supervised release, but only after the government agreed to, among other things, jointly recommend a time-served sentence and to write a letter to immigration authorities detailing his past cooperation in his bank fraud case. Defendant received a time-served sentence, and the district court ordered him to pay just over $22,000 in restitution to a victim insurance company based on the company's actual losses. The government attorney sent a letter to immigration authorities as promised, but the U.S. Attorney's Office thereafter sent a second letter in error claiming the attorney who sent the first letter had done so in his personal capacity only. The office soon realized the error and sent a third letter retracting the second one. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied defendant's request to stay his then-pending removal proceeding, the district court denied his request for a remedy for the government's breach of his plea agreement, and defendant was removed to Nigeria. Held: The district court did not err in denying defendant's request for a remedy for the government's breach, as the promise breached was not the government's sentencing recommendation or otherwise directly related to the sentence imposed, and the government's retraction letter cured the breach by providing defendant what he had bargained for, that is, a statement from the government he believed would favorably impact his ongoing removal proceeding, received by the Board prior to its unfavorable decision. Nor did the district court err in calculating the amount of the insurance company's losses and ordering restitution in that amount, as defendant's admissions in his plea agreement established direct and proximate cause for the claimed losses by a preponderance of the evidence, a government witness testified he had independently verified a summary of losses the insurance company had certified as true and correct, and there was no evidence the company had overstated its losses. Finally, to the extent the issue is not moot, defendant's challenge to his concurrent time-served prison terms as substantively unreasonable lacks substantive merit, as he requested the sentence.
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