morning honors may please the court james bond was a loan officer whose job was to submit won't have to cations to wonders in the heady days of two thousand and seven and early two thousand and eight the information provided to wonders did not have to be verified and thus mr viney did not verify the information provided by the true culprit of this case mr a lodger the prosecution per trade james bonnie is a rogue loan finally with fifteen years of recognition experience and publications to quote the district court would have explained the reality and the mortgage loan process and the fact that the information did not have to be verified for was submitted to wonders of counsel even if if that's what he had been allowed to testify to if he had been allowed to testify to the fact that there was no prevailing practice in the industry at the time that caused anybody to have to go follow up on the information they'd been provided is it not the case that mr viney did in his statement to the f b i and indicate that he knew that the information was false and somehow came to know it and he s applications and signed off on anyway your honor i believe that the statement to aging macdonald this is certainly damaging to our case but it's not debilitating for the reason that the statement is somewhat ambiguous in that he does does not explicitly say when he knew that this information was false so i would i would argue that the that statement in the fact that he did not say when he knew that this information was false coupled with mr family's testimony if it had been admitted would show works at least allow the jury to see that mr viney did not have to i'm his to independently verify this and that he didn't have to are that people just want i would say both your honor i was warm say the latter since the documents he signed included statements that he had verified the information well your honor that the applications themselves they're not for testimony your client wish to present was that agents didn't verify not testimony that they shouldn't verify or that they were required to verify it would have been like testimony that people drive fifty five miles an hour on lake shore drive which is true but it wouldn't change the fact that the speed limit is forty five certainly writer and along the analogy to speeding example you know this is a specific intent of facts and specific intent obvious you know people who drive fifty five miles an hour like her drive know two things first that that's the normal speed of traffic when it's not sixty and they also know that that's illegal yes but if they drive the legal right they'll be involved in an accident because somebody will run right up their rear bumper right true but it wouldn't be a understand how the information about the defendant's own training would be relevant here but that's not what findlay was prepared to testify about is a yes or no with me as that where is the last has experience and would have testified about three of the specific lenders citibank homecoming and i believe it was washington mutual and those those are lenders that mr viney dealt with do mr von testify that he was trained not to verify i know you are not it not explicitly not explicit there's there's testimony that imply it from mr viner that implies that he simply rubber stamps information provided believe mr viney would receive one to three percent of i believe it's called the yield premium so the bonus that he would have been paid a regular fee as he would in all he took ten thousand dollars to move these to the front of the line yes perhaps look the other way that suit is what the jury found on how does that compare to what you would with the other compensation you would ever receive fro of think it was i i don't think it was that much i think was probably somewhere in between i think it was proximate couple thousand and frankly around or i don't know if that was explicitly in the record so it's far as the bonus go certainly that was it was a two thousand dollar profile bonus that that mr biden was paid and given the given the context and given how much  made off of this scheme and office is other multitude of schemes the two thousand dollar payment was not was not significant the grand scheme of things and going to the insufficiency of evidence romney's statement agent done right which almost paraphrase almost quotes the ostrich instruction right so why isn't that enough to rule twenty nine purposes i understand you want to say it doesn't you because you know it's someone ambiguous in that he did not know exactly when or he's not clear as to when he knew that this information was false or may have been falls and  that's in addition to his partition his participation in the scheme that that state that statement confession if you want to call it that goes more to the second element of wire fraud and not necessarily the first  partition participation in the scheme and that goes back to my earlier point that the prosecution never presented any any of us from a stroke of logic testifying you know here was what i told mr viney to do we met on this occasion we planned this there's none of that testimony so it's but the rule twenty nine standard is not that the government somehow has to bring in every piece of proof that possibly could have marshaled right and ensure that the standard is was the evidence sufficient that a reasonable jury could come to the conclusion that it did and it isn't just the agents the statement to the agents right and then the letter that got faxed it was purportedly from mr leno that that had some information in it that wasn't altogether accurate that the way the applications and selves were submitted their loan documents themselves which had significant amounts of false information and even if you didn't go track them down one would think you would at least look at them there's more evidence here just in that statement to the agent no evidence regarding anything between those two no evidence that that any of those individuals had any discussions and again no evidence that mr viney mr a collage discussed these loans these loan applications estate personnel the district court wasn't confused about the appropriate standard use the correct standard and it zoomed right in on what was missing and specifically what was missing was any things that tie this expert testimony about a purported  verification practice and this particular defendant's intent which was the purpose for which it was purportedly being offered this wasn't to testimony and as i believe the court pretty much recognized this was a testimony about an industry standard this was testimony supposedly about a practice and there was no proper that the expert had a basis for knowing what the verification practice was or wasn't at the mortgage brokerage or financial institutions that this defendant had worked at and this defendant was trained out which were countrywide adverse national and the court gave the defense an opportunity to provide more information the court specifically issued an order give me what you've got to give me more of a basis here and nothing more was pro to the defendant's own employers and training instead what came back was proffering about about the practice or the so called practice at the lenders in this case  particularly any proffer of information that how this expert supposedly knew about the practice of the lenders was based on some unspecified communications and meetings with some unidentified representatives and lenders on unspecified occasions as a district court recognized the defendant himself never worked for these victim banks he was never a loan officer was an interesting phrase victim banks well in this case in this case they were as the jury  found and there was no indication that these banks in this case had done anything correct the defection the defendant function by his own description in testimony his position you know even just the use of the phrase  loan officer well technically he had this title loan officer as he did himself described his position in his testimony he was a mortgage broker he didn't work for these banks and almost the experts proper almost reads as though he's in this someone who works for the victim lenders as a traditional loan officer the defendant described himself really as a broker he used the word broker in his testimony who mix to put together the in this case there wasn't even a proffer at that point that the defendant or that the defense would prove produce any evidence or there would be any evidence that the defendant even rely on anyone on any submissions from anyone else for his own confession and per the evidence that the government presented of the defendant not testified that really the evidence was that he helped create all of this certainly oak logic came to him but there was no indication that the documents necessarily came from a any sign that the district judges pretrial ruling excluding families testimony was tentative you know what i don't believe the judge did but the government you know in particular that the judge said and come back to me after your case or anything but the government did the government won and the government's initial response was your honor there's not even been a proper appeal or any indication of this right good for purposes of rule one of the three or we need we need to concentrate on what the judge said the judge i do not believe did at that point she almost took it even assuming that that such evidence came was how her opinion reads however however and it's not the government's position that the defendant that this issue is necessarily wave we would say we would take yes we're not claiming waiver but we would claim that it would should be reviewed under a plain error standard because the defendant certainly at once presenting that testimony could revisit it but the cortney not even go there we think the evidence is so clear here that under any standard this was not an erroneous ruling and surely not under the district court's extremely wide discretion in ruling on expert witnesses and in particular here they any error would be harmless the evidence which included the confession which included all the circumstantial evidence in the face was overwhelming and in fact the defendant as i believe was pointed out in mike in coun argument did not testify that he even relied on this or was trained to rely on such a practice his testimony was that it was common in the financial world for another lender or  loan officer for another loan officer or real estate personnel to bring the packages when they couldn't get through to somebody else and then for you to resubmit them and do things but he discussed nothing about verification or practice with verification so even in his own testimony he didn't establish that that kind of reliance that would make this testimony any more relevant in terms of the sufficiency of the evidence you know in his cell phone number i knew that some of the information was false but i really just didn't want to know the truth on and on the clear application of those lines at the time he submitting the application in addition that the officer and the agent testified that when he's talking about having put down that both were for primary residences that he admitted to him this is agency testimony that he admitted to him that there was no legitimate reason to put both being pri residence on two different applications so you know viewed in its whole both the actual written confession class the additional information provided by the agent the secrets of events is clear  know again we're not saying the jury couldn't if tried a five piece they found a different way but but certainly the evidence more than supported the jury's verdict because in addition to the confession there was also so much circumstantial evidence including the conflicting information on the face of the applications providing local law just phone number is that of the borrower saying signing the application saying that he'd gotten the information directly from the borrower when in fact he hadn't you know the list of lies just go on and on right from the face of the application and to meet you know particularly to me that the thing most damning here is that idea of staggering these loans and structuring them in such a way that you go to all these different lenders for each for each condominium and not and they're happening within days at most a week of each other and not disclosing to each lender that these other loans were obtained so just on the expert issue you know i would just say that the jury needed to know the mr bonny was not required to verify all collages information context is critical and along the prosecution to eliminate that context as a finding submission or in a vacuum certainly save the prosecution's case help the prosecution's case if i was not obligated to verify family was described all he was going to testify is that it was not normal to verify and we're just back to the lake shore drive example right right it's not normal to drive forty five but it is legally required to drive forty five right so what are you are my own for the proposition that he was not obligated to verify that i would change that language i apologize i would not say allocative but but not that it was not standard and that they were a defense to a criminal charge but here we have a legal requirement that watch of people in the field to feel bad why would that be a defense because it's a specific intent crime and all he has to do is know what the legal requirement is certainly one once again i would simply say that that criminal defendant has a constitutional right to percent of the funds and yes but my question is why use a defense well because it goes to find his state of mind well it sounds a little bit more like everybody else is out there doing the same thing i'm doing so i shouldn't be held to it everybody else is speeding so the speed limit can't be enforced against me we know that's a nonstarter although that mixed metaphor case is taken under advisement