Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01157/USCOURTS-ca7-16-01157-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Joseph Furando
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Argued, July 7, 2016

Decided July 25, 2016

Before

DIANE P. WOOD, Chief Judge

WILLIAM J. BAUER, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL S. KANNE, Circuit Judge

No. 16-1157

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

JOSEPH FURANDO,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District 

Court for the Southern District of 

Indiana, Indianapolis Division.

No. 1:13-cr-00189-SEB-TAB-4

Sarah Evans Barker,

 Judge.

O R D E R

This appeal is frivolous. Joseph Furando pleaded guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud, 

lying to federal investigators, and money laundering. At sentencing, he asked the district 

court to give him credit for acceptance of responsibility even though he had committed a 

number of crimes and threatened to kill prosecution witnesses after being indicted. The 

district court found that Furando had not accepted responsibility, and he challenges only 

that decision. We affirm Furando’s sentence.

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

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No. 16-1157 Page 2

From 2009 until 2012, two companies owned and operated by Furando bought 

more than 35 million gallons of inexpensive biodiesel, falsified documents to make the 

fuel appear eligible for tax credits through an EPA program, and resold the fuel to a 

coconspirator, E-Biofuels, LLC. E-Biofuels then marked up the price as if the fuel was 

eligible for the tax credits and sold it to other retailers, generating more than $55 million 

in profit. A grand jury charged Furando, his companies, and others with conspiracy, 18 

U.S.C. § 371; wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1343; false statements, 18 U.S.C. § 1001; and money 

laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 1957. Furando pleaded guilty to all 27 counts in which he was 

named.

At sentencing, witnesses testified to multiple instances of criminal conduct by 

Furando between the indictment and sentencing. One of Furando’s coconspirators 

testified that he had threatened to make her “disappear” and hurt her family if she 

turned on him. The witness, who had been chief operating officer of Furando’s biofuel 

companies, told EPA agents the truth about the scheme and her involvement. After he 

was indicted, Furando learned what she had told the agents and demanded that she 

retract her confession. When Furando learned that she instead had contacted the 

prosecutor saying that she had more information to share, Furando again told her to 

recant and offered to pay her attorney’s fees if she wrote a retraction, which she did.

Another witness and former employee of Furando’s testified that, while on 

pretrial release, he had physically and sexually assaulted her on several occasions, told 

her to lie at a court hearing about a physical altercation between Furando and the former 

COO, and forced her to help him frame the former COO for prostitution so that he could 

discredit her as a witness.

Even after Furando’s bond was revoked and he was taken into custody, he

continued planning crimes and attempting to silence witnesses against him. His cellmate 

testified that Furando had said he wanted to “make a couple people in his case 

disappear,” provided personal details about the two female employees, and suggested 

poisoning them with a vial of liquid nicotine stored in his garage. Furando also asked his 

cellmate to distribute LSD for him and deposit the profits into his jail commissary 

account.

The probation officer calculated a total offense level of 38. He recommended 

adding 2 levels for obstruction of justice, see U.S.S.G. § 3C1.1, and did not recommend 

any deduction for acceptance of responsibility, see id. § 3E1.1. Furando objected to not 

receiving a reduction for acceptance of responsibility and argued at sentencing that he 

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No. 16-1157 Page 3

should receive at least a 2-level reduction since his guilty pleas saved government 

resources and encouraged his codefendants to enter guilty pleas. Furando 

acknowledged that an upward adjustment for obstruction of justice generally is 

inconsistent with acceptance of responsibility, see U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1 n.4, but argued that, in 

light of that increase, refusing to give him credit for acceptance of responsibility would 

be “punishing him twice” for the obstructive conduct. The government countered that 

pleading guilty was “not enough” given Furando’s pretrial misconduct.

The district court did not reduce Furando’s offense level, reasoning that pleading 

guilty wasn’t sufficient by itself to demonstrate acceptance of responsibility. The court 

rejected giving “some sort of reward” for Furando’s guilty pleas, calling them “almost 

another form of fraud” given “all this other stuff going on.” The court calculated an 

imprisonment range of 235 to 293 months and imposed a 240-month sentence.

On appeal, Furando challenges only the district court’s decision not to reduce his 

offense level for acceptance of responsibility. He urges us to conclude that the reduction 

should have been granted because (1) his guilty pleas saved judicial resources, (2) he did 

not wait until the “last minute” to plead guilty, (3) he did not contest the loss calculation 

or other collateral issues, (4) he twice offered to cooperate with the government, (5) he 

acknowledged his criminal actions at the sentencing hearing, (6) his misconduct while 

on pretrial release was (by his account) unrelated to the pending criminal case, and (7) he 

acknowledges a need for psychological counseling.

Furando does not flesh out his argument much beyond providing this list. But it 

doesn’t matter—the district court did not err in declining to reduce his offense level for 

accepting responsibility. A defendant who pleads guilty is not entitled to an adjustment 

for accepting responsibility as a matter of right, U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1 n.3, and “a defendant 

who has obstructed justice is presumed not to have accepted responsibility,” United 

States v. Buckley, 192 F.3d 708, 711 (7th Cir. 1999) (citing U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1 n.4); 

see also United States v. Bennett, 708 F.3d 879, 893 (7th Cir. 2013). That presumption can be 

rebutted in “extraordinary circumstances,” but we have concluded that simply pleading 

guilty and refraining from further obstruction of justice is not sufficient. See Buckley, 192 

F.3d at 711 (“The fact that a defendant having done everything he could to obstruct 

justice runs out of tricks, throws in the towel, and pleads guilty does not make him a 

prime candidate for rehabilitation.”). Rather, a defendant must show either that the 

obstruction was trivial (causing no extra expense to the government) or that he made up 

for his obstruction by taking more than the routine steps that normally earn the discount. 

United States v. Hacha, 727 F.3d 815, 818 (7th Cir. 2013).

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Furando did not show that his acceptance was exceptional. Furando’s guilty pleas 

do not demonstrate anything more than the “routine steps” that typically warrant an 

acceptance-of-responsibility discount. See Bennett, 708 F.3d at 893 (upholding denial of 

§ 3E1.1 reduction to defendant who had jumped bail and then dealt drugs for next four 

years before pleading guilty). His other pretrial conduct far from “made up” for his 

obstruction of justice: He continued committing violent physical assaults while on 

pretrial release and, while detained, plotted to kill federal witnesses and sell drugs.

AFFIRMED.

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