FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION MAR 21 2014
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 12-10287
Plaintiff - Appellee, D.C. No. 2:10-cr-01725-SRB-2
v.
MEMORANDUM*
RHONDA MONICA LIDDLE,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona
Susan R. Bolton, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted February 11, 2014
San Francisco, California
Before: TALLMAN and RAWLINSON, Circuit Judges, and GARBIS, Senior
District Judge.**
Rhonda Liddle appeals her jury trial conviction for conspiracy, federal credit
institution fraud, and transactional money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§
2, 371, 1006, and 1957. Rhonda’s husband, Willliam Liddle, used his position as
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
**
The Honorable Marvin J. Garbis, Senior District Judge for the United
States District Court for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.
Vice President of the Business Lending Department of the Arizona Education
Association Federal Credit Union (AEA) to approve millions of dollars in
questionable business loans to the Liddles’ family friends, Frank Ruiz and Dan
Thelen. The Liddles received kickback payments in exchange for issuing the
loans.
On appeal, Rhonda argues that the evidence adduced at trial was insufficient
to prove that she knew the nature of her husband’s misconduct, that she intended to
further the objects of the conspiracy, or that she knew the kickback funds were
derived from illegal activity. She also claims that two jury instructions imposed by
the district court unduly confused the jury’s deliberation and lowered the
government’s burden of proof. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and
we affirm Rhonda’s conviction.
We review Rhonda’s sufficiency of the evidence challenge de novo. United
States v. Rizk, 660 F.3d 1125, 1134 (9th Cir. 2011). In reviewing the evidence in
the light most favorable to the government, we conclude that a rational trier of fact
could have found the essential elements of Rhonda’s crimes beyond a reasonable
doubt. See United States v. Nevils, 598 F.3d 1158, 1163-64 (9th Cir. 2010) (en
banc).
2
Rhonda’s role in the conspiracy was substantial. Ruiz and Thelen
repeatedly, over several years, hand-delivered to Rhonda bank envelopes stuffed
with thousands of dollars in $100 bills. Rhonda deposited those payments, along
with the cash payments Ruiz and Thelen gave her husband directly, into the
Liddles’ joint checking account. In 2009, Thelen transferred $575,000 to a trust
account the Liddles opened just days earlier. Rhonda withdrew approximately
$560,000 from the account and used the proceeds to purchase a new family home.
She also personally went to AEA several times to collect funds to pay for a
$100,000 remodeling project for the same home.
Rhonda was not an innocent housewife blindly running errands for her
husband. Responsible for balancing the family’s checkbook, Rhonda had a front-
row seat to the family’s financial gymnastics. In 2009, for example, the Liddles
deposited as much in cash as William earned in salary, while household expenses
soared above the family’s income. When investigators came knocking, Rhonda
acted more savvy than surprised. After being confronted by an FBI agent about
handling illicit proceeds from her husband’s criminal activity, Rhonda responded,
“Are you asking me to choose between my husband of 25 years or talk to the
FBI?” Rhonda then quickly co-signed a backdated promissory note that made
Thelen’s earlier $560,000 wire transfer look like a loan. She delivered the note to
3
Thelen, along with a set of talking points from her husband that appeared to lay out
possible defenses to charges of financial wrongdoing.
Based on the combination of Rhonda’s active participation in the loan fraud
conspiracy, her responsibility over the family’s finances, her friendship with the
co-conspirators and their wives, and her multiple efforts to obstruct the FBI’s
investigation, a rational jury could have found that, as to the counts on which she
was convicted, she knew the objects of the conspiracy and that she aided and
abetted each element of her husband’s federal credit institution fraud crimes. See
Nevils, 598 F.3d at 1163-64. A rational jury could have also found that she knew
that the multiple kickback payments she received, deposited, and spent, were
derived from her husband’s unlawful lending scheme. See id.1
We also reject Rhonda’s jury instruction challenges. Based on the evidence
described above, the government demonstrated that Rhonda played a sufficiently
substantial role in the fraudulent loan conspiracy to support a Pinkerton co-
conspirator instruction. United States v. Bingham, 653 F.3d 983, 997-98 (9th Cir.
2011). The district court did not abuse its discretion in giving the instruction.
1
The jury may have alternatively convicted Rhonda of the same counts
based on a Pinkerton co-conspirator theory of guilt. See Pinkerton v. United
States, 328 U.S. 640, 646-48 (1946). The evidence adduced at trial was sufficient
for a rational jury to convict on this basis.
4
Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in giving the deliberate
ignorance instruction derived from United States v. Jewell, 532 F.2d 697 (9th Cir.
1976 (en banc). Rhonda’s entire defense was that she lacked actual knowledge of
the source of the illegal proceeds she received, deposited, and spent. But “[i]f the
jury believed [Rhonda’s] position that [she] did not have actual knowledge, then
the government’s evidence could still support the inference that [she] knew that
there was a high probability” that the funds were illegally derived “but deliberately
chose not to confirm that suspicion.” United States v. Ramos-Atondo, 732 F.3d
1113, 1119 (9th Cir. 2013). Even if the government failed to show that Rhonda
took deliberate steps to avoid discovering the truth, Rhonda’s “failure to
investigate can be a deliberate action.” Id.
We are not convinced that the Jewell instruction lowered the government’s
burden of proof as to Rhonda’s mens rea.2 The jury instructions, read as a whole,
were neither misleading nor inadequate to guide the jury’s deliberation. See
United States v. Garcia–Rivera, 353 F.3d 788, 792 (9th Cir. 2003).
2
Rhonda raises this specific argument for the first time on appeal. We thus
review it for plain error. United States v. Klinger, 128 F.3d 705, 711 (9th Cir.
1997). Even if the district court erred by not limiting the Jewell instruction to the
transactional money laundering counts, the error was not so obvious as to be plain.
Id. at 712; see also Ramos-Atondo, 732 F.3d at 1120 (affirming the use of a Jewell
instruction as to a conspiracy charge).
5
AFFIRMED.
6