Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cr-00541/USCOURTS-cand-3_15-cr-00541-9/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
John Ching En Lee
Defendant
USA
Plaintiff

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff,

v.

JOHN CHING EN LEE,

Defendant.

Case No. 15-cr-00541-SI-1 

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND 

DENYING IN PART DEFENDANT'S 

MOTION FOR JUDGMENT OF 

ACQUITTAL OR NEW TRIAL

Re: Dkt. No. 136

Defendant John Ching En Lee moves for a judgment of acquittal or new trial on two 

charges of providing false statements to a government agency. Docket No. 136. Argument on the 

matter was heard on September 16, 2016. Having considered the arguments of the parties and the 

papers submitted, the Court hereby GRANTS IN PART and DENIES IN PART defendant’s 

motion.

BACKGROUND

Defendant was charged with two counts of making false statements to the government in 

violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a), based upon statements he made in interviews with government 

agents on August 26, 2009, and October 10, 2013. Docket No. 14. The first count of the 

indictment charged defendant with “making false statements to representatives of the Department 

of Homeland Security about his involvement in providing funding to the owner of Crystal 

Massage Parlor, who was arrested for prostitution in relation to the Crystal Massage Parlor. The 

statements and representations were false because JOHN CHING EN LEE then and there knew 

that he had provided $30,000 to the owner to fund the Crystal Massage Parlor.” Id. at 1-2. The 

second count charged defendant with “making false statements to representatives of the 

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Department of Homeland Security about his use of Treasury Enforcement Communications 

System (TECS) for personal reasons. The statements and representations were false because 

JOHN CHING EN LEE then and there knew that he had queried his own name, as well as the 

name of the owner of the Crystal Massage Parlor, using multiple spellings of the owner’s name 

and using the owner’s birthdate.” Id. at 2. 

On June 30, 2016, a jury found defendant guilty of both counts. Docket No. 123. 

Defendant now moves for a judgment of acquittal under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 29 or 

for a new trial under Rule 33. Docket No. 136. In the alternative, defendant “requests an 

evidentiary hearing to determine whether the government committed discovery violations, violated 

the Jencks Act, . . . or otherwise committed constitutional error with respect to the October 10, 

2013 interview of Mr. Lee.” Id. at v.

LEGAL STANDARD

I. Rule 29

Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requires the Court, on a defendant’s 

motion, to “enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is insufficient to 

sustain a conviction.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a).

The Court’s review of the constitutional sufficiency of evidence to support a criminal 

conviction is governed by Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979), which requires a court to 

determine “whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any

rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable 

doubt.” Id. at 319; see also McDaniel v. Brown, 558 U.S. 120, 133 (2010). This rule establishes a 

two-step inquiry:

First, a . . . court must consider the evidence presented at trial in the light most 

favorable to the prosecution. . . . [And s]econd, after viewing the evidence in the 

light most favorable to the prosecution, the . . . court must determine whether this 

evidence, so viewed, is adequate to allow “any rational trier of fact [to find] the 

essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.”

United States v. Nevils, 598 F.3d 1158, 1164 (9th Cir. 2010) (en banc) (quoting Jackson, 443 U.S. 

at 319) (final alteration in Nevils).

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II. Rule 33

“Upon the defendant’s motion, the court may vacate any judgment and grant a new trial if 

the interest of justice so requires.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(a). The Ninth Circuit described the 

standard for granting a new trial in United States. v. A. Lanoy Alston, D.M.D., P.C., 974 F.2d 1206 

(9th Cir. 1992), which it reaffirmed in United States v. Kellington, 217 F.3d 1084 (9th Cir. 2000):

[A] district court’s power to grant a motion for a new trial is much broader than its 

power to grant a motion for judgment of acquittal. The court is not obliged to view 

the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, and it is free to weigh the 

evidence and evaluate for itself the credibility of the witnesses. . . . If the court 

concludes that, despite the abstract sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the 

verdict, the evidence preponderates sufficiently heavily against the verdict that a 

serious miscarriage of justice may have occurred, it may set aside the verdict, grant 

a new trial, and submit the issues for determination by another jury.

Kellington, 217 F.3d at 1097 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

DISCUSSION

Defendant urges the Court to grant his motion based on the following: as to Count One, he 

argues that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a conviction as to the elements of falsity, 

intent, and materiality; as to Count Two, he argues that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a 

conviction as to the elements of intent and materiality. He also argues that the government’s case 

was weak, that the government improperly and prejudicially focused its case on prostitution, that 

the government committed discovery and Jencks Act violations, that the government’s closing 

argument was misleading, and that the Court erred by not giving the defendant’s proposed jury 

instruction on falsity.

I. Count One

Defendant argues, in part, that his conviction on Count One cannot stand because the 

government “did not offer sufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the exchange 

that was false, i.e., the precise question asked and the answer that was false.” Mot. at 12. The 

Court is troubled by the fact that the August 26, 2009 interview was not recorded and that the 

agents’ notes do not detail the exact question asked. Nevertheless, “viewing the evidence in the 

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light most favorable to the prosecution,” it finds that a “rational trier of fact could have found” the 

element of falsity beyond a reasonable doubt. See Nevils, 598 F.3d at 1164.

There was much testimony at trial from the agent who conducted the August 2009 

interview regarding precisely what he asked. DHS Agent Ricardo Fuentes testified as follows:

 Q. And what questions did you ask?

A. Based on that answer, I was actually thinking now at this point well, how did she 

fund this business. So I had asked him, I said, “Well, did you loan her or give her any 

money to start this business?” 

. . . 

Q. And what did you ask him? 

A. I asked him if he had actually funded or assisted with that business.

Tr. 236:20-237:9 (Fuentes Direct).

 Q. And so you asked him exactly “what about funding the business” during that 

interview? 

A. I asked him if he had ever given money to his wife to fund this business, to start it 

up. 

Q. Your precise question was, "If you ever -- Mr. Lee, have you ever given Ms. Liu 

any money to start up the business?" 

A. To fund the business, yes.

...

Q. The same question over and over again, “Did you give” –

A. Right.

Q. – “your wife any money to fund the Crystal Massage Parlor?”

A. Correct. If he had provided any funds to her. 

Q. Is it, "Did you provide any funds to her," or "Did you give her any money to fund" -

-

A. I think I probably asked it around three different ways. 

Q. What three different ways did you ask him? 

A. Probably, "Have you ever funded this" -- "have you ever provided money to fund 

this business," and then he denied doing that. And then later on I would ask him 

something similar and he would deny it.

Tr. 260:7-261:5 (Fuentes Cross).

 Q. You asked him that question, “Did you give your wife any money to fund the 

business.” He said no?

A. He denied that.

Tr. 261:17-19 (Fuentes Cross).

 Q. You asked -- you testified that you asked Mr. Lee several times throughout the 

interview about funding of the massage parlor; is that right?

A. Correct.

Q. And that question was, “Did you give your wife any money to fund her business”; 

correct?

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A. Correct.

Tr. 276:7-13 (Fuentes Recross).

 Q. And to the best of your recollection, the precise terminology of that question was, 

"Did you give your wife any money to fund the business"? 

A. "Did you assist her with funding," yes. 

Q. "Did you assist her with funding" or "Did you give her any money to fund"? 

A. "Give her any money." 

Q. Which one is it? 

A. "Give her any money." 

Q. "Did you give her any money to fund the business"? 

A. Right.

Tr. 277:11-21 (Fuentes Recross).

 Q. Now, without reading your notes, do you recall what specific thing the defendant 

said?

A. I asked him specifically if he had given money to fund this business, and he 

specifically said, “I have never funded this business.”

Tr. 278:11-15 (Fuentes Further Redirect).

DHS Agent John Henderson, who also participated in the August 2009 interview, testified that he 

did not recall what question Agent Fuentes asked defendant during the interview. Tr. 304:17-20; 

306:19-307:16.

Although the testimony varies as to the exact wording of the question asked, it shares a 

common thread: the use of the word “fund” or “funding,” which defendant attacks as ambiguous. 

Although this word may be susceptible to the interpretation that defendant put forward at closing 

argument—that it could be asking whether Mr. Lee funded his wife’s business with money out of 

his own pocket rather than with a loan he obtained from a bank—a rational trier of fact could have 

found that the term “fund” included obtaining a loan. Moreover, upon further questioning from 

both defense counsel and government counsel, Agent Fuentes settled on the phrasing of his 

question as follows: "Did you give her any money to fund the business"? or “. . . specifically if he 

had given money to fund this business . . . .”1 See Tr. 277:11-21; 278:11-15. In this scenario, the 

operative term is not “fund” but is rather “give.” A rational trier of fact could have found the 

element of falsity by concluding that whether Mr. Lee gave money to his wife for her business

 

1

This is also the phrasing the parties agreed to in the jury instructions: “The statement 

charged in Count One is that Mr. Lee stated: ‘No’ to the question whether he gave his wife any 

money to fund her business.” See Docket No. 121 at 36.

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included giving her money he borrowed from a bank.

Defendant cites to two Ninth Circuit cases that, though analogous, do not justify 

overturning the jury’s verdict here. The first, United States v. Sainz, 772 F.2d 559 (9th Cir. 1985), 

involved a perjury conviction where the grand jury transcript clearly documented the exchange at 

issue. In that case, the question asked was a compound question containing an imprecise term, to 

which the defendant gave a literally true answer. See 772 F.3d at 563-64. The second case, 

United States v. Jiang, 476 F.3d 1026 (9th Cir. 2007), involved a bench trial for a charge 

involving false statements to the government under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a). The appeals court 

overturned the conviction in part based on factors that are not present here: that the agent’s notes 

“were recorded some time after the day of the interview” rather than contemporaneously, as here, 

see Tr. 242:11-18, 250:1-3, 283:9-11, 299:2-10; that the agent requested that Jiang bring 

documents to the interview regarding the specific topics at issue, unlike here, where the agents did 

not tell Mr. Lee the interview topic in advance, see Tr. 194:21-195:4; and that Jiang’s English was 

“broken” and “poor.” 

Defendant argues that his case is also analogous because, when questioned directly in 

August 2013 about whether he obtained a loan for his wife, he was forthcoming, as were the 

defendants in Sainz and Jiang. However, those cases involved much shorter lapses in time 

between the challenged question and the follow-up question that elicited the truthful response. See 

Jiang, 476 F.3d at 1028-29 (follow-up question asked one week after original interview); Sainz, 

772 F.2d at 561 (follow-up question asked during the same interview). Here, defendant gave his 

truthful answer four years after the alleged false statement, after his wife had revealed to agents 

that her husband had gotten a bank loan for her to purchase the massage parlor. Viewing the 

evidence here in the light most favorable to the prosecution, as it must, the Court cannot say that 

the evidence is insufficient as to the element of falsity in Count One.

The Court also disagrees with defendant that the evidence was insufficient to sustain a 

conviction on the elements of materiality and intent. A statement is material if it “is capable of 

influencing or affecting a federal agency,” although the false statement “need not have actually 

influenced the agency.” United States v. Service Deli, Inc., 151 F.3d 938, 941 (9th Cir. 1998); see 

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also United States v. De Rosa, 783 F.2d 1401, 1408 (9th Cir. 1986) (statement is material if it

“(1) could affect or influence the exercise of governmental functions; or (2) has a natural tendency 

to influence or is capable of influencing agency decision”). Even adopting the stated purposes for 

the investigation that defendant puts forth in his motion, a rational juror could have concluded that 

the false statement in Count One was material to DHS’s actions. See Mot. at 16. Further, a 

rational juror could have concluded that defendant had the requisite intent2because, as the 

government notes, he had a law degree, he had worked as a federal employee since 2001, and at 

the beginning of the interview he signed a Garrity form warning him that “[a]nything you say may 

be used against you as evidence both in an administrative proceeding or any future criminal 

proceeding.” See Oppo. at 8-9. 

For these reasons, the Court DENIES defendant’s motion for a judgment of acquittal as to 

Count One. Likewise, finding that the evidence does not “preponderate[]sufficiently heavily 

against the verdict,” the Court DENIES defendant’s motion for a new trial on Count One. See

Kellington, 217 F.3d at 1097.

II. Count Two

Defendant also moves for acquittal as to Count Two. The Court agrees with defendant that 

the evidence, even viewed in the light most favorable to the prosecution, is insufficient to sustain a 

conviction on Count Two because no rational trier of fact could find the essential element of

materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.

At trial, the government introduced evidence that on March 19, 2009, defendant ran three 

queries of his wife’s name in TECS, to which he had access as an Immigration Services officer. 

Tr. 378:2-379:10. Four and a half years later, on October 10, 2013, DHS Office of Inspector 

General Special Agent Lamont Scott interviewed defendant regarding his TECS usage, “to find 

out why he ran his wife in the TECS system . . . .” See Tr. 317:14-318:8; 386:10-387:4. 

The jury found defendant guilty based on the following instruction: 

 

2 Defendant’s motion here focuses on whether there was sufficient evidence that he “knew 

his conduct was unlawful.” See Mot. at 15.

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Mr. Lee is charged in Count Two with knowingly and willfully making a 

false statement on or about October 10, 2013, in a matter within the jurisdiction of 

a governmental agency or department, the United States Department of Homeland 

Security, in violation of Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code. In 

order for Mr. Lee to be found guilty of that charge, the government must prove 

each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt: 

First, Mr. Lee made a false statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of 

the Department of Homeland Security; 

Second, Mr. Lee acted willfully; that is, Mr. Lee acted deliberately and with 

knowledge both that the statement was untrue and that his conduct was unlawful; 

and

Third, the statement was material to the activities or decisions of the 

Department of Homeland Security; that is, it had a natural tendency to 

influence, or was capable of influencing, the agency’s decisions or activities.

The statement charged in Count Two is that Mr. Lee stated: “No” to the 

question whether he ever made any unauthorized queries of his wife in TECS for 

personal use.

Docket No. 121 at 37 (emphasis added). 

Defendant argues first that the statement in question could not have been material because 

“Agent Scott told the grand jury that the purpose [of his investigation] was to ‘determine if Mr. 

Lee was associated with the brothel operating as a massage parlor’” and the massage parlor closed 

five years before the interview regarding the TECS search. Mot. at 17 (citing Tr. 424). The 

government counters that the March 2009 search date was “significant to [Special Agent Scott] 

because it raised the specter that Defendant had impermissibly run the queries to obtain restricted 

information about [his wife’s] judicial proceedings or immigration status, or both.” Oppo. at 15.

But what the government fails to state, and what it failed to present at trial, was what activities or 

decisions of DHS were or could have been influenced by defendant’s October 2013 denial. 

The government’s arguments that there was sufficient evidence as to materiality read rather 

like after-the-fact justifications. For instance, the government argues that defendant’s August 

2013 admission that he had obtained a bank loan for his wife “called Defendant’s overall 

credibility into question” and so Special Agent Scott “then expanded his investigation to include 

Defendant’s use of the TECS system . . . .” Oppo. at 14. That Special Agent Scott decided, years 

into the investigation of defendant, to explore the possibility of TECS misuse years before does 

not mean that a false statement regarding that misuse was material. Nor is there materiality in the 

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government’s assertion that the TECS question “was certainly an important part of the 

investigation regarding [defendant’s] connection with Crystal Massage Therapy” when the 

business had been closed for several years by the time of the October 2013 interview. See id. at 

15. 

It is also not persuasive that if defendant had been forthcoming in October 2013 this would 

have saved the agency “further investigative steps” into his TECS queries. Special Agent Scott 

testified that in February 2014 and April 2014 he requested further documentation about 

defendant’s queries and TECS history from Customs and Border Protection. Tr. 327:10-14, 

399:2-25, 406:6-17. Special Agent Scott’s reasons for wanting these documents were broad,3but 

several of the documents (a copy of the TECS exam, defendant’s training records) appear to be 

related to TECS training, and Special Agent Scott testified that he had an opportunity to question 

defendant about TECS training during the October 2013 interview. See id. 393:1-9, 399:12-16.

Critically, Special Agent Scott testified that he knew defendant was lying at the October 

2013 interview. Prior to the October 2013 interview, Special Agent Scott obtained a print-out 

from TECS showing defendant’s March 2009 queries of his wife’s name. Tr. 395:25-396:11. 

Therefore, before defendant made the false statement, the agency had internal proof that defendant 

had run such a search, and Special Agent Scott testified that he confronted defendant with this 

information at the interview.

4

 Tr. 395:25-396:17. Special Agent Scott further testified that “the 

answers that he was giving me in my opinion were not true” and that after Special Agent Scott 

confronted defendant with the document he “asked [defendant] a series of questions over again.” 

Tr. 396:12-24. Where the agency knew that defendant’s statement was false at the time it was 

 

3

Special Agent Scott testified that he wanted the information “[t]o gain more information 

into who Mr. Lee was and how he had authority, what his training was, all to basically let me

know that he had -- he knew about TECS training, he knew about the rules and the regulations, he 

was a TECS user, to provide me more backup documentation.” Tr. 399:17-22.

4 Defendant states that the first time he learned of the allegation regarding the TECS printout was upon hearing Special Agent Scott’s testimony at trial. Mot. at 10. No mention of the

TECS printout is made in the Scott’s notes or report, or those of his assistant, Special Agent Lee, 

nor is a copy of it appended to any of those documents. These allegations form the basis of 

defendant’s argument regarding discovery violations and his request for an evidentiary hearing.

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made, the government’s evidence does not suffice to show materiality.

Accordingly, the Court GRANTS defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal on Count 

Two. Where a court “enters a judgment of acquittal after a guilty verdict, the court must also 

conditionally determine whether any motion for a new trial should be granted if the judgment of 

acquittal is later vacated or reversed.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(d)(1). For the same reasons stated 

above that the Court finds a judgment of acquittal should be granted, and because the evidence 

regarding the element of materiality in Count Two “preponderates sufficiently heavily against the 

verdict that a serious miscarriage of justice may have occurred,” the Court conditionally finds that 

a new trial should be granted if this judgment of acquittal is later vacated or reversed. See

Kellington, 217 F.3d at 1097. Should that occur, the Court further finds that an evidentiary 

hearing in advance of the new trial is necessary for the reasons stated in defendant’s motion. See

Mot. at 26-27.

III. Other Matters

Having granted defendant’s motion for acquittal on Count Two, the Court need not rule on 

defendant’s allegations regarding potential discovery and Jencks Act violations, defendant’s 

concerns with the government’s closing argument,5and defendant’s request for an evidentiary 

hearing.6 The Court is not persuaded by defendant’s argument that “the government’s case was 

weak at best,” see Mot. at 19, as the Court is granting defendant’s motion for a judgment of 

acquittal as to the weakest part of the government’s case—materiality under Count Two. This 

leaves defendant’s arguments that the Court erred in failing to give his proposed instruction on 

falsity and that the trial was improperly prejudiced by references to prostitution.

The Court does not find that it was error to fail to give defendant’s proposed instruction on 

 

5

These concerns pertain primarily to the timing of defendant’s TECS query.

6

This request is largely made to gather evidence in support of the defense’s attack on 

Count Two.

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falsity.7 First, the Court does not find that the agent’s question in this case was ambiguous to the 

same extent as the questions in Jiang and Sainz, which defendant cites in support. Second, the 

Court heard extensive argument on this point from both sides prior to the close of trial. See Tr. 

563:17-568:11. The Court permitted defense counsel to make the argument contained in the 

proposed instruction during closing, and defense counsel did so. See Tr. 568:6-11, 622:1-5 (“If 

you all can decide on the exact question that Agent Fuentes asked, that question still has to be 

clear. If that question is ambiguous and there is a reasonable response to that ambiguous question, 

it is not a false statement. That is not a knowing and deliberate false statement.”) The jury heard 

this argument and still convicted defendant on Count One. 

The Court also finds that references to prostitution did not unfairly prejudice the jury, as 

defendant argues. The Court discussed this with the parties during the pretrial conference and 

again during the first day of trial. See Docket No. 105 at 2; Tr. 5:1-13:20. The Court limited the 

government to one witness on the topic of the alleged prostitution activities and ordered “that the 

testimony shall be for the purpose of showing how the massage parlor’s allegedly illegal activities 

triggered DHS’s investigation and how defendant’s statements were material to that 

investigation.” Docket No. 105 at 2. The Court does not agree with defendant that the 

government exceeded those bounds at trial. 

Defendant mainly takes issue with two pieces of testimony: (1) that government witness 

Leslie Severe testified that “undercover agents ‘were solicited for some type of sexual activity’” at 

the massage parlor, and (2) that “Agent Fuentes testified that he read a portion of the police report 

to Mr. Lee during the August 2009 interview stating that Ms. Liu solicited sex from an undercover 

agent . . . .” See Mot. at 21-22. As to Ms. Severe’s testimony, the government asked Ms. Severe 

on direct examination to respond “based on your personal observations.” Tr. 157:18-22. When 

Ms. Severe stepped beyond those boundaries, defense counsel made a hearsay objection that the 

Court sustained. Tr. 157:23-158:6. Nor does the Court find that it was impermissible hearsay for 

 

7 Defendant sought the following instruction: “If you find that a particular question asked 

of Mr. Lee was ambiguous and that Mr. Lee truthfully answered one reasonable interpretation of 

the question under the circumstances presented, then his answer would not be false. It is the 

burden of the government agents to clarify any ambiguous statements.” Docket No. 119 at 2.

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Ms. Severe to testify as to the direction she gave her officers regarding when to use a “bust 

signal.” See Tr. 160:23-162:2. As to Agent Fuentes’s testimony that he read a police report 

regarding defendant’s wife’s alleged solicitations, the Court gave a limiting instruction to the jury. 

Tr. 198:24-199:22. The references to defendant’s wife’s actions constituted only a brief portion of 

Agent Fuentes’s lengthy testimony, and was drawn out to show the effect on the listener as well as 

to explain why Agent Fuentes still remembered the interview conducted nearly seven years earlier. 

See Tr. 199:24-200:17. Overall, these limited references to sexual activity at the massage parlor 

did not “impermissibly taint[] the verdict,” as defendant argues. See Mot. at v.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons and for good cause shown, the Court hereby DENIES 

defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal or a new trial on Count One. The Court GRANTS 

defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal on Count Two.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: September 20, 2016

______________________________________

SUSAN ILLSTON

United States District Judge

Case 3:15-cr-00541-SI Document 144 Filed 09/20/16 Page 12 of 12