purposes of the appeal of this trial take place before or after the other one this trial took place before the other one for the other want to rest on the other one occurred one week after the verdict on this argument and would try it would focus at this point at some of the sentencing issues that we believe are important the st of all the issue as to whether or not the court erred in assessing a two level arguments as you want i think i saw it in the breeze but i can't recall now absent the enhancements that you are objecting to what was and i know you have an issue on lost as well but what putting the specific offense related in hanson it's aside what were the advisory guidelines based on the last amount the district court found so the advice or guideline range the final advice for a guideline what were the what would the advisory guidelines have been i'm trying to make and get a sense of what sort of a difference it made to have these and handsome and yes your honor so for purposes of the sophisticated means i believe that is which basically is included for the fraud and for the money laundering should not have been included for both we recognize that there is case law that says it's appropriate her involvement in this case did not in vaal sophisticated means miss alice i would respectfully suggest contrary to the sentencing court's description of  that i'm sure everyone has read i would suggest is use a very stubborn woman very proud woman someone who genuinely believed that she was a c actual knowledge of all the different types of schemes that are involved in the case that mr ahmadi i would suggest was the primary orchestrator of and so her involvement really sorts of accounts created that were fictitious in nature absolutely absolutely and that you don't think that speaks to the sophisticated nature of the scheme well i would i would respectfully suggest that they exist the question is to what degree dispersal alice had knowledge of it and knowledge of the existence i mean she's probably putting herself out there under her own name to this corporation that's you know receiving and sending money and so to what she was and she receiving money her a fair number of victims that she had no relationship with absolutely absolutely and as used representing herself in trial i mean that's the questions you constantly ask the victims when they take the stand it do you know priscilla alice do you do you know pick an international on what have you so it's yes absolutely all of those things are taken thank you very much  we would disagree with that but i mean of that the jury could find that a drug could find yes could find that he'd realize what was going on well we believe that the circumstantial evidence didn't provide testified she thought he was just helping out mr courtezan because one of alice's wires what bad sometime wires go bad they just needed another account you know mr cortese was essentially an escrow agent  didn't have to you wasn't gives you due diligence on either side of the transaction he was just told when to transmit money and that's what he did but he did he was significantly involved whatever you attributed to he was significantly involved with the so called under freezing of accounts and money right correct and he was doing that because he thought he was helping the client with you know of complex international she believed she had a corporation well that that belief you know transferred to him and he wanted to he was would win does well and you know i was was there evidence about how he was compensated for his work well his game was very minimal i believe that forty eight thousand was all he made from this fifteen million dollars scheme so it just doesn't make sense he was doing that was like you was that amount received like per transaction or per accounts or was that lump sum or paid regularly regularly does a record indicate anything about that that the forty eight you look at things in e mails and what the conspirators speak to each other differently than they do when they're speaking with mr courtezan because they believe he's his lawyer they're he says he's their lawyer and they speak to him differently they don't say anything like oh we got another mark let's go they say you know we need help with this transaction it's very you know it just seems on the up and up and what did did somebody have anything to say about  audie i don't i don't think he testified there were two coke it's no no in term in terms of any coconspirator conversations that might have been introduced involving him now not not involving mr courtezan that i remember and the coconspirators that did testify merrit nadji they said they didn't have any kind of conspiracy or agreement with mr cortis so it's hard to have a conspiracy when everybody is saying there is no conspiracy this point i thank you very much for the united states morning let me just start where we left off with mr courtezan knowledge of the fraud and i just wanted to start out with something that the district court said at him and sentencing and the others by exploiting his office as a lawyer to coerce joel reassure or exploit as needed that perfectly describes what he did here and evidence of his knowledge was extensive a madi referred victims to him when they were when their accounts were being frozen madi told them to contact partes e he would not have done that if courtezan was not knowing member of this conspiracy  do some legitimate work for them that's not what you write so what's the difference between a drug organization hiring someone  to make sure that something is in order let's say n s e c filing is in order for a company that somebody owns and what happened with mr courtezan here the difference is that the evidence showed that mr carr tasing to about the fr he had he had fraud funds running through his trust account ever they went through that through the through the trust account that not everything i mean there were many don't think accounts used i was opposed to his business account right therefore it was going right of directing those funds out to accounts in international accounts the e mails between and the text messages between card tacey and alice show that he knew what was going on here he knew bank accounts were being frozen and allegations of fraud he knew that and his job was to contact the banks and and tried them out of freezing these accounts that that's what his role he relayed messages from a he did not know that he was involved was he according to the evidence the government put on was mr courtezan involved with all of their various different types of schemes within the overall conspiracy right well so is he involved in some or most or all of those schemes he was involved in so many of them i can't say he was involved in all of them but there is evidence that he knew about for example the romance scheme as we called it our brief because he went to collect money from from elsie green he was that mysterious man in the white shirt who showed up to to collect the money from victim elsie green  account was scheduled to receive some of the funds from the johnstone supply checks so we can for from that that he was involved in that as well you knew about the joseph haynes real estate scheme because he received some of the funds from that scheme as well you  i mean there's evidence on and i could and i could continue with the evidence is he knew about many many aspects of the seams scheme and much of the money from the scheme was flowing through his account with respect to how he was getting paid the bank records showed also testified that some of the money that was flowing through his account that they were he was being authorized to keep some of it so many months when she would take out cash she would deliver it to him now what happened to that cash we're not   double counting argument two things i think we can say with confidence that none of the guidelines calculation mattered here because the district court believe that she needed to be imprison as long as allowed by law when sentencing her the court said the principal consideration here is to permanently disable miss ellis from the possibility of criminal activity to the maximum extent that we can short of the death penalty now remember by this time she had already been charged with the murder for hire and with committing additional frauds while she was in prison after she had been in victim on these charges was there i want to word this carefully was there evidence presented either during the trial or at sentencing about miss ell role in the murder for hire scheme as that trial had not yet taken place now and say there was evidence only think or knew was that she had been charged charged right but there was no evidence put on at that point because that trial had not yet taken place mention that to be one point one applies both if a substantial if the offense involved the use of sophisticated means or if a substantial part of the scheme was committed from outside the united states and of course we of this organization was in canada we have cell phone calls from miss ellis to him we have text messages between him and at the time of the trial a mahdi was in canada and as were some of the other members of this organization substantial part of this are gone skiing did occur and of course we had otis also the one who was making the counterfeit checks he was in south africa so to me one dollar applied to guard lists of whether there were sophisticated beings but of course they were sophisticated means because of all the layering of all these transactions because of the use of cell court corporate because of the use of so many different bank accounts and because of the variety of the fraud schemes so that and handsome and certainly  to her guideline right but that i understand what you're saying but the advisory guideline arrange matters in so far as you have to gauge the extent of what a variance would have been had the guidelines not been i believe the government is correct that there was no evidence for senate at the sentencing in this case referenced the other charge and i would also suggest that respectfully that judge merit a certainly was familiar with the allegations and the conduct that was alleged in the other charge and we specifically know children to her own daughters to those who are closest to her or in comprehensible the nine year old child is some reference to the daughter of legals daughter that's correct that's correct so ok but when the government says it doesn't matter i think it's i think it's important to to focus on on the wards of the sentencing judge  and his description of the conduct of my client because i would respectfully suggest that that it give gifts tries to concern about whether or not clearly he's very upset with missiles clearly he describes her as someone who needs to be removed from society and the exact language is in my brief but someone who needs to be punished to the maximum extent short of the death a had a daughter you know he specifically recommends to the president that you not be allowed to have any contact with her youngest daughter her youngest daughter who was a high school student at the time that maybe they weren't considered as they should have been because of the outrage that the court had and the anger that was present because of the conduct that the court was aware of that takes place just one week after the  she represent herself at sentencing with you again a standby counsel or did you have more of a role in sentencing and i will stand by on that was a there was a breakdown a despite her protestation of innocence did she request a specific range of sentence from the district court when she allocute it or made argument below or not she respected seats you asked the court  student questions i'll rest on the briefs ok thank you the mistress kosky again thank you very much for your service to your clients and to the court we really do appreciate thank you thank you  your next case is number eighteen