In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff‐Appellee,
v.
LEON DINGLE, JR., and KARIN DINGLE,
Defendants‐Appellants.
____________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Central District of Illinois.
No. 12‐CR‐30098 — Richard Mills, Judge.
____________________
ARGUED MARCH 29, 2017 — DECIDED JULY 5, 2017
____________________
Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and WILLIAMS, Cir‐
cuit Judges.
WOOD, Chief Judge. The State of Illinois, through its
Department of Public Health, furnishes funds to a variety of
organizations that provide health services. Included among
those grantees were the Broadcast Ministers Alliance of
Chicago (“Broadcast Ministers”), Access Wellness and Racial
Equity (“AWARE”), and Medical Health Association
(“MHA”). Collectively these three organizations received
2 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
more than $11 million from the Department between 2004
and 2010. Unbeknownst to the Department, however, some
$4.5 million of those dollars flowed through the grantees to a
company called Advance Health, Social & Educational
Associates (“Advance”), which was owned and controlled by
Leon and Karin Dingle. That might have been fine, but for the
fact that most of those monies did not go to the stated
purposes of the grants. Instead, the Dingles spent the diverted
funds on personal luxuries, such as yachts and vacation
homes. The government eventually caught up with them and
indicted them on charges of mail fraud and money
laundering. A jury convicted them, and they have now
appealed from both their convictions and their sentences. We
find no reversible error for either defendant, and so we affirm
the judgments of the district court.
I
The state funds were designed to improve health care in a
number of areas, including breast, cervical, and prostate
cancer, HIV/AIDS, and emergency preparedness. In order to
achieve these goals, the Department worked primarily
through grantees. During the time covered by the Dingles’
scheme, the Directors of the Department included
Eric Whitaker and Damon Arnold. A woman named
Quinshaunta Golden served for some time as chief of staff to
the Director; Roxanne Jackson was a former employee of the
Department and a personal friend of Golden.
Advance was a for‐profit corporation with offices located
in Chicago. Leon Dingle was its president, chief executive of‐
ficer, treasurer, and sole shareholder. Karin Dingle served as
the vice president and secretary. (In the remainder of this
opinion, we refer to them by their first names.) The Dingles’
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002 3
friend Jacquelyn Kilpatrick was the vice president of opera‐
tions and bookkeeper. Edmond Clemons, Kilpatrick’s domes‐
tic companion, helped out, and in 2009 the two established a
consulting firm called Jeck Consultants, LLC.
Before 2004, Advance offered consulting services; it was
involved in the development of the cable television industry
in the Chicago area. Through this connection, Leon met offi‐
cials from Broadcast Ministers. Acting on its behalf, he per‐
suaded the Department to give Broadcast Ministers
$1,460,000 in grants, for disbursement to groups such as the
Brothers and Sisters United Against HIV/AIDS (“Brothers
and Sisters”) and the Faith‐Based Emergency Preparedness
Initiative (“Faith‐Based”). The latter organizations empha‐
sized the needs of minority communities.
Leon also had business and personal relationships with
Whitaker, Golden, Arnold, Claudia Johnson, and
Ronald Hickombottom. Johnson met Leon in 2003; the two
later had a multi‐year extra‐marital sexual relationship. Dur‐
ing that time, Johnson helped Leon in his grant‐related work
with Broadcast Ministers. It was Johnson who established
AWARE in 2007; Hickombottom (Leon’s personal physician)
established MHA in 2008. Both of these organizations pro‐
vided medical consulting services.
Using this web of entities, Leon and his associates caused
the Department to award 42 grants, totaling more than
$11 million, to Broadcast Ministers, AWARE, and MHA be‐
tween 2004 and 2010. Leon had inside help: Golden, with
whom Leon had at least one sexual encounter (which took
place in her office!), steered grants in accordance with Leon’s
instructions. Although the grants nominally went to the three
4 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
named recipients, in fact they were nothing but straw grant‐
ees. A substantial proportion of the funds wound up in the
hands of Leon and Advance. Leon accomplished this with, for
example, the use of phony contracts that indicated Advance
would perform services that the grantees were already
providing, false grant applications and budgets, dishonest re‐
ports, and concealment of Advance’s role. The record is filled
with examples of how Advance got its hands on Depart‐
mental grants, and how it diverted those funds to the personal
use of Leon and Karin.
All of the grant funds were disbursed to the grantees by
the mailing of checks from the Department’s Springfield of‐
fices to Chicago. These funds represented approximately 88%
of Advance’s income between 2007 and 2010. Leon and Karin,
and to a lesser degree Kilpatrick and Clemons, received a
large share of the grant funds, but they did little to no work
contemplated by the grants. What they did do was to write
and sign generous checks for themselves (nearly $2.5 million
payable directly to Leon and Karin, for instance). Leon and
Karin also used the funds to pay more than a half million dol‐
lars in personal expenses, such as tax payments, memberships
at various yacht and country clubs, maintenance of a condo‐
minium in an exclusive Chicago building, support of two va‐
cation homes, and a mortgage for their son.
Although Leon appears throughout this account, that does
not mean that Karin was missing. In addition to reaping the
benefits of the fraudulent scheme, Karin was involved in its
operation, though to a lesser degree than Leon. In addition to
serving as Advance’s vice president and secretary, she worked
part‐time at its office. There she performed administrative
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002 5
tasks, such as light typing, answering the telephone, and pay‐
roll. She scheduled and drafted agendas for meetings related
to the grant programs. There was evidence indicating that she
was aware of the shady provenance of the money that she and
Leon were receiving. On one occasion she and Kilpatrick con‐
fronted Leon about being “greedy.” Of the $2.6 million in Ad‐
vance checks that were issued to Leon and Karin from 2007 to
2010, $440,900 was paid directly to Karin. During that same
period, she signed 915 Advance checks, totaling $1.7 million;
many of those were for personal expenses.
The party ended in November 2012, when a grand jury re‐
turned indictments against both Dingles. Leon was charged
with one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud (18 U.S.C.
§ 371), 13 counts of mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341), and two
counts of money laundering (18 U.S.C. § 1957(a)). The charges
against Karin were similar: one count of conspiracy to commit
mail fraud, four counts of mail fraud, and one count of money
laundering. After an eight‐week trial, a jury convicted both of
them on all counts. The district court, seemingly taking their
advanced age into account (Leon was 78 and Karin 76 at the
time), gave both of them below‐guidelines sentences: Leon re‐
ceived a 72‐month sentence based on a range of 78 to 97
months; and Karin received a 36‐month sentence based on a
range of 41 to 51 months.
II
Both defendants have appealed. Leon presents three
arguments for our consideration: (1) the jury instructions
violated his Fifth Amendment rights, because they allegedly
made acquittal only optional upon a finding of reasonable
doubt; (2) the district court abused its discretion under
Federal Rule of Evidence 403 when it permitted the admission
6 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
of evidence of Leon’s marital infidelity; and (3) the sentence
imposed on Leon was procedurally and substantively
unreasonable. Karin raises two points: (1) the evidence was
insufficient to support her convictions; and (2) her sentence
was unreasonable because the loss amount overstated the
seriousness of her conduct. We address Leon’s appeal first,
and then turn to Karin’s.
A. Leon Dingle
At the trial, Leon twice submitted proposed instructions
to the district court. Consistently with the Seventh Circuit’s
Pattern Criminal Federal Jury Instructions, he asked the court
to give an “elements” instruction that followed this model:
If you find from your consideration of all the evi‐
dence that the government has proved each of these el‐
ements [of the offense] beyond a reasonable doubt,
then you should find the defendant guilty [of that
charge].
If, on the other hand, you find from your consider‐
ation of all the evidence that the government has failed
to prove any one of these elements beyond a reasona‐
ble doubt, then you should find the defendant not
guilty [of that charge].
7TH CIR. CRIMINAL PATTERN INSTRUCTION 4.01 (Elements/Bur‐
den of Proof) (emphasis added). The district judge complied,
which puts Leon in the awkward position of attacking the in‐
struction he requested.
Leon rests his complaint about this instruction on the
firmly established rule of In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364
(1970), that “the Due Process Clause protects the accused
against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002 7
doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with
which he is charged.” No one disputes that this is the rule, in
the abstract. But it is not a rule that can help Leon.
The first problem is that, by affirmatively requesting the
use of the pattern language, Leon has waived this argument.
This should have been clear, in light of our consistent hold‐
ings that “approval of a jury instruction in the district court
extinguishes any right to appellate review of the instruction.”
United States v. Trudeau, 812 F.3d 578, 589 (7th Cir. 2015) (quot‐
ing United States v. Yu Tian Li, 615 F.3d 752, 757 (7th Cir. 2010)).
Even if we could stretch to find forfeiture, rather than out‐
right waiver, Leon would be no better off. This court has twice
considered and rejected the argument that the use of the word
“should” in the jury instruction, rather than the word “must,”
impermissibly permits conviction even if the jury concludes
that one or more elements has not been proven beyond a rea‐
sonable doubt. United States v. Mansoori, 304 F.3d 635, 655–56
(7th Cir. 2002); United States v. Kerley, 838 F.2d 932, 940 (7th
Cir. 1988). As we said in Kerley, “it is hardly plausible that the
jury supposed that while they ‘should’ acquit Kerley if he was
not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they didn’t have to ac‐
quit him if they didn’t want to.” 838 F.2d at 940. We recognize,
as Leon points out, that most of our sister circuits use the
word “must” in their pattern instructions, but that does not
mean that “should” is incorrect. For what it is worth, Web‐
ster’s Third International Dictionary indicates that “should”
is used in an auxiliary sense to express “duty, obligation, ne‐
cessity, propriety, or expediency.” This makes it even harder
for us to condemn the use of the word “should” as plain error,
which is the standard that applies for a forfeited argument.
See Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 134–35 (2009).
8 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
Given the strength of the evidence against Leon, we also
find it impossible to believe that the substitution of the word
“must” for “should” in this instruction could have affected
the jury’s decision. Taken as a whole, the instructions to the
jury properly told it how to apply the reasonable‐doubt stand‐
ard. The district court did not commit error at all, much less
reversible error, by accepting the language Leon offered and
instructing the jury consistently with this court’s long‐stand‐
ing jurisprudence.
Leon’s second complaint relates to the district court’s
decision to admit evidence of his dalliances with Quinshaunta
Golden and Claudia Johnson. The government wanted to use
this evidence to show Leon’s close personal ties with a high‐
level Department employee who was steering grants to the
straw charities (Golden) and with the head of AWARE
(Johnson), one of those “charities.” An important theme of the
government’s case was Leon’s close ties with his co‐
conspirators. These explained the structure of the fraudulent
scheme, his leadership role, and the trust displayed by the
participants. Nothing suggests, furthermore, that the
government was obsessed with the sexual nature of these
relationships. It also highlighted other ties, such as Leon’s
longstanding friendship with Hickombottom.
Evidence is relevant if “it has any tendency to make a fact
more or less probable than it would be without the evidence”
and that fact “is of consequence in determining the action.”
FED. R. EVID. 401. Relevant evidence is admissible unless the
Constitution, a law, or the rules prohibit it. FED. R. EVID. 402.
The only possible rule that might have excluded this evidence
was Rule 403, which allows a court to keep out otherwise rel‐
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002 9
evant evidence “if its probative value is substantially out‐
weighed by a danger of … unfair prejudice … .” FED. R. EVID.
403. The district court has considerable leeway in its applica‐
tion of Rule 403, and we are satisfied that it stayed within the
bounds of its authority.
Finally, we have Leon’s sentencing arguments. His advi‐
sory sentencing range, based on an offense level of 28 and a
criminal history category of I, was 78 to 97 months. This rested
on a loss amount between $1.5 million and $3 million, and
several upward adjustments, including one for being the or‐
ganizer or leader of the scheme. After weighing the factors
outlined in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), the district court selected a be‐
low‐guidelines sentence of 72 months, and it ordered Leon to
pay $2.9 million in restitution (of which $386,250 was owed
jointly and severally with Golden and Jackson). Leon attacks
this sentence as procedurally flawed, for allegedly failing to
take into account either his age and physical condition or the
fact that he already had paid a substantial amount toward his
restitution and could pay much more if he were not impris‐
oned.
If the district court actually had overlooked these two ar‐
guments, we might have a problem. See, e.g., United States v.
Donelli, 747 F.3d 936, 939 (7th Cir. 2014) (judge must address
defendant’s principal arguments in mitigation if those argu‐
ments have recognized legal merit). But the court was guilty
of no such oversight. First, in keeping with our recommenda‐
tion in United States v. Garcia‐Segura, 717 F.3d 566, 568–69
(7th Cir. 2013), the judge (upon the government’s prompting
near the end of the proceedings) asked Leon whether he had
“adequately addressed all of [the] sentencing arguments,”
and Leon’s attorney said yes. Unless the timing of the question
10 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
was a problem—a point on which we would comment only if
there were something to his position—that was enough to
waive any procedural objection based on the court’s failure to
discuss something.
Even if Leon’s sentencing arguments were not waived or
forfeited, they have no merit whatsoever. The court com‐
mented that “there’s no question that this was a very serious
offense … based on greed,” that it went on for several years
and involved “staggering” amounts of money, and that the
evidence was “overwhelming.” The court also expressly con‐
sidered Leon’s evidence in mitigation. That included his im‐
portance to his family, his lifelong devotion to Chicago’s mi‐
nority community, his ability to pay, his faith, and the charac‐
ter letters in the file. In addition, the court said, “I’ve consid‐
ered the defendant’s age and his physical condition.” It
acknowledged that Leon was in his late seventies, and that
this was a factor that had to be taken into account. That is just
what the court did: on the one hand, it considered the im‐
portance of general deterrence and avoiding disparities, and
on the other hand, it considered the seriousness of the crime
and its view that age alone does not warrant a discounted sen‐
tence. In short, although Leon may not like the way in which
the court weighed his advanced age, the court did not commit
the procedural error of overlooking this point. There was no
need for the court to delve into the mortality tables for the de‐
mographic group to which Leon belongs, as he argues.
There is also nothing to Leon’s complaint about the weight
that the court gave to his pre‐payment of restitution. He paid
about $1 million in restitution before sentencing. The judge
knew this, although he said little about it, commenting only
that he had considered Leon’s “ability to pay restitution by
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002 11
selling legitimately obtained assets” as a mitigating factor.
Even with a million paid off, Leon still owed another $1.9 mil‐
lion in restitution. All told, this point was insubstantial
enough that it did not require more than the brief acknowl‐
edgement the court gave it.
Leon’s only remaining argument is that his sentence was
substantively unreasonable. Aside from the fact that we have
yet to grant relief to a defendant on the ground that a below‐
guidelines sentence is substantively unreasonable, nothing in
Leon’s case prompts us to break that pattern. He stole
$4.5 million in public funds that were intended to prevent
AIDS, cancer, and other serious diseases in Illinois’s needy
population. He was thus a reverse‐Robin Hood, stealing from
the poor to enrich himself and his family. Even though he will
be in his mid‐80s when he leaves prison, that is not the kind
of de facto life sentence that has concerned us in the past.
B. Karin Dingle
Karin’s primary argument on appeal is that the evidence
did not show that she intentionally committed the crimes of
which she was accused. It is exceedingly difficult to win on
this basis, once a jury has weighed the evidence and has found
guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. As the Supreme Court put it
in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319 (1979), at this stage of
the proceedings “the relevant question is whether, after view‐
ing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecu‐
tion, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential
elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Recall that Karin was charged with conspiracy to commit
mail fraud, several substantive counts of mail fraud, and one
count of money laundering. For the conspiracy charge, the
12 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
government had to prove: (1) that there was a conspiracy to
commit mail fraud, (2) that Karin joined that conspiracy with
the intent to further it, and (3) that at least one conspirator
committed an overt act in furtherance of the agreement.
United States v. Sims, 329 F.3d 937, 943 (7th Cir. 2003). For the
mail fraud charges, the government had to show: (1) a scheme
to defraud, (2) use of the mails, and (3) Karin’s participation
in the scheme with the intent to defraud. United States v.
McClellan, 794 F.3d 743, 751–52 (7th Cir. 2015). Lastly, for the
money laundering charge, the government had to prove that
“the defendant knew the transaction involved criminally de‐
rived property that was derived from an unlawful activity,
here, [mail] fraud.” United States v. Ajayi, 808 F.3d 1113, 1119
(7th Cir. 2015).
Karin’s focus on intent makes our job relatively easy. A rea‐
sonable juror could conclude that Karin intended to further
the conspiracy, intended to participate in the scheme to de‐
fraud, and intended to launder the money, if she knew what
Advance was really up to. This was certainly a jury question,
and the jury might have concluded (as Karin urges) that her
work at the firm was limited to light and non‐substantive ad‐
ministrative tasks, and that she played no part in either ob‐
taining the grants or diverting them to Advance. But that is
not the conclusion the jury drew. Instead, it found her lack of
knowledge about some details of the arrangements to be out‐
weighed by what she did know.
We already have reviewed the significant ways in which
Karin participated in the scheme to fleece the Department,
and how she personally benefited from that scheme. She con‐
fronted Leon about taking “too much” grant money, she
signed over $1.7 million in Advance checks, she used that
Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002 13
money to purchase a Mercedes‐Benz, and she personally di‐
verted $15,000 in grant funds to help her son with his mort‐
gage. She expressly agreed with another person not to pay
state taxes that were due. And with all that, just to be safe, the
court gave the jury both the basic intent instruction and an
ostrich instruction.
We are satisfied that, viewing the evidence favorably to
the government, a reasonable jury could find that Karin’s ac‐
tions were intentional, and that she otherwise committed the
crimes of which she was accused. She is not in the same posi‐
tion as the defendant in United States v. Price, 623 F.2d 587
(9th Cir. 1980), overruled on other grounds by United States v.
De Bright, 730 F.2d 1255 (9th Cir. 1984) (en banc). In Price, the
defendant truly was minimally involved; she worked at her
fraudster husband’s company for only three months. Karin
worked at Advance for decades. And unlike Price, there were
specific incidents that revealed Karin’s awareness of the
broader scheme.
As we noted, the court sentenced Karin to a prison term of
36 months, based on an advisory range of 41 to 51 months (of‐
fense level 22, criminal history category I). As with Leon, the
offense level was based on a loss of more than $1.5 million and
less than $3 million. The court gave her a four‐level down‐
ward adjustment in offense level to account for her minimal
role in the offense. It rejected her request for a sentence of pro‐
bation, for which she had argued based on her lack of a prior
criminal record, her minimal participation, and her age.
Karin urges that the loss amount that the court used in
computing the “anchor” guidelines range greatly overstated
her culpability. But by granting her the minimal‐participant
14 Nos. 15‐3871 & 16‐1002
adjustment provided by U.S.S.G. § 3B1.2(a), the court ex‐
pressly took account of her lesser role in the offense. Although
it had the discretion under section 3553(a) to add to that dis‐
count, it arguably did so by dropping below the guidelines
range for her sentence. It was under no obligation to do more.
With respect to substantive reasonableness (a point that
we conclude Karin did not waive), Karin argues that because
she was a passive recipient of the lucre from the fraud, it is
unreasonable to hold her accountable for the full amount sto‐
len. The district court was entitled, however, to take into ac‐
count the fact that she and Leon shared the ill‐gotten gains.
As the judge put it, Karin had a “direct connection” to the loss
because even though she “was not the leader … [she was] cer‐
tainly part of the scheme.” There was nothing unreasonable
about the court’s conclusion that in the end “there simply has
to be” a consequence for her criminal conduct.
III
Leon and Karin Dingle enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle for
many years. They did so at the expense of people whom the
Department of Public Health was trying to help. By the time
they were caught and convicted, they were older, but that
does not mean that they could, or should, not be held respon‐
sible for their actions. We find no error in their convictions or
sentences, and so we AFFIRM the judgments of the district
court.