[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

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No. 19-11058

Non-Argument Calendar

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D.C. Docket No. 6:17-cr-00140-PGB-LRH-3

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

JACQUES JEANTY, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

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Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Florida

________________________

(April 22, 2021)

Before BRANCH, LAGOA, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: 

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Jacques Jeanty was convicted of conspiring to steal money from the United 

States and stealing property from the United States for his participation in a tax 

refund fraud conspiracy. Jacques pleaded not guilty, and, at trial, argued that he 

was ignorant of the conspiracy and that the other conspirators—his children and an 

employee of a family business—were actually to blame. The district court gave a 

deliberate ignorance instruction to the jury, which thereafter convicted Jacques. 

The district court then sentenced Jacques to 78 months’ imprisonment and did not 

grant his request for a downward variance based on his poor health and lack of 

criminal history.

Jacques appeals, challenging the district court’s deliberate ignorance jury 

instruction and the lack of a downward variance in his sentence. After careful 

consideration, we affirm the district court’s deliberate ignorance jury instruction. 

And because we lack jurisdiction to consider Jacques’s challenge to the denial of 

his request for a downward variance, we dismiss that portion of his appeal.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

Jacques’s daughter, Jeanine Jeanty, owned and operated Jahira’s 

Convenience Store. Jahira’s employed Jacques’s son, Jean, as well as Samuel 

Belizaire. In October 2010, Jeanine and Jean—together with Jacques and 

Belizaire—began submitting fraudulent federal tax returns.

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The conspirators’ scheme was simple: Jeanine purchased stolen 

identification information and then she, Jean, and Belizaire used the information to 

prepare fraudulent tax returns. The trio carried out the scheme at Jahira’s. When 

the conspirators filled out the fraudulent tax returns, they would use various 

addresses that did not belong to the victims, including several addresses for 

properties that belonged to Jacques or one of the other conspirators. Based on the 

information in the fraudulent tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) 

would mail refund checks addressed to the victims to the listed addresses. After 

receiving the checks, one of the conspirators would bring them to Jahira’s. 

Jeanine, Jean, or Belizaire would falsely endorse the checks, and then one of the 

conspirators would deposit the checks into one of the seven bank accounts the 

conspirators had opened to receive the tax return checks. In total, the conspirators 

deposited 400 fraudulent checks totaling $2,764,771 into the seven bank accounts.

Jacques was involved in this scheme in several ways. He was sometimes at 

Jahira’s while the others prepared the fraudulent tax returns. He also owned 

several properties to which the conspirators had arranged to have the checks 

mailed. For example, Jacques’s driver’s license listed his address as an apartment 

on Ernest Drive from 2010–2012. Jacques later told IRS agents that he lived there. 

The IRS mailed eight refund checks to various taxpayers at that address between 

April 2011 and March 2012. Another refund check was sent to a different property 

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that Jacques owned on Galbi Drive. When a refund check arrived at one of 

Jacques’s properties, he sometimes brought the check to Jahira’s himself and 

sometimes asked Jean to pick it up for him. Jacques was sometimes at Jahira’s 

when one of the other conspirators falsely endorsed a refund check.

Jacques also opened eight bank accounts in 2012—some of them personal, 

some of them jointly with another conspirator, and some of them on behalf of 

Jahira’s. The conspirators—including Jacques himself—deposited fraudulent tax 

return checks into these accounts. Jacques and Jean also registered a limited 

liability corporation, J&J Multi Services Co., LLC, and obtained a license for it as 

a check-cashing business. They listed Jacques as the registered agent and manager

of the company on the registration. J&J was a shell company and Jacques and Jean 

deposited 153 fraudulent return checks totaling $960,922 into the J&J account.

Jacques was out of the country for part of the duration of the fraud scheme. 

He was travelling and absent for six non-consecutive months of the full 21 months 

the scheme lasted.

B. Procedural History

A grand jury indicted Jacques on one count of conspiring to steal money 

from the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 641, and one count of 

stealing property from the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 642. 

Jacques pleaded not guilty to both charges and his trial began in August 2018. 

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However, the trial resulted in a hung jury. Jacques’s second trial, the one at issue 

in this appeal, began in December 2018.

Jacques’s defense was ignorance of the conspiracy. After the close of 

evidence, the district court held an informal charge conference with the parties to 

discuss the jury instructions. At the conference, Jacques objected to the district 

court’s inclusion of a jury instruction regarding deliberate ignorance. The district 

court overruled Jacques’s objection, explaining that Jacques’s ignorance defense 

and the totality of the facts—checks addressed to other people arrived at his 

residence or properties he controlled, he brought those checks to the convenience 

store, he opened multiple bank accounts, and the checks were not directly related 

to the convenience store’s business—supported an inference that there was a high 

probability Jacques was aware of the fraudulent checks and purposefully avoided 

learning all the facts. Jacques maintained his objection to the deliberate ignorance 

instruction.

The district court’s instruction to the jury on deliberate ignorance was:

If a Defendant’s knowledge of a fact is an essential part of a crime, it 

is enough that the Defendant was aware of a high probability that the 

fact existed – unless the Defendant actually believed the fact did not 

exist. 

“Deliberate avoidance of positive knowledge” – which is the 

equivalent of knowledge – occurs, for example, if a defendant 

possesses a package and believes it contains a controlled substance 

but deliberately avoids learning that it contains the controlled 

substance so he or she can deny knowledge of the package’s contents. 

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So you may find that a defendant knew about the possession of a 

controlled substance if you determine beyond a reasonable doubt that 

the defendant (1) actually knew about the controlled substance, or (2) 

had every reason to know but deliberately closed his eyes.

But I must emphasize that negligence, carelessness, or foolishness 

isn’t enough to prove that the Defendant knew about the possession of 

the controlled substance.

The jury found Jacques guilty on both counts.

At sentencing, the district court found Jacques’s total offense level to be 28

and that he had a criminal history category of I, which resulted in a U. S.

Sentencing Guidelines range of 78 to 97 months’ imprisonment. Jacques argued 

that he should receive a non-prison sentence, or, in the alternative, a downward 

variance to a 24-months’ imprisonment. He argued that he was not well-educated

and came from a broken home and asserted that “the guidelines [were] very tough” 

on him, especially given that his children were the principal actors in the scheme. 

Jacques also pointed out that he had no criminal history and was unlikely to 

commit future crimes. Finally, he explained that he had physical health issues—

heart issues and general poor physical health that required eight prescriptions—that 

should be taken into consideration.

The district court sentenced Jacques to a term of 78 months’ imprisonment: 

60 months for the conspiracy conviction and 78 months for the fraud conviction, to 

run concurrently, with two years of supervised release and a restitution payment of 

$2,764,769. The district court explained that it had considered the sentencing 

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factors in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a): the nature of the crime; Jacques’s lack of criminal 

history; and the need for the sentence to reflect the gravity of the crime, promote 

respect for the law, and to provide just punishment. The district court noted that 

the fraud scheme lasted for two years, was complex, and that Jacques had been a 

participant from the scheme’s inception and had played a central role by creating a 

fraudulent company and using it to open bank accounts to conceal the illegal 

activity. The district court further explained that the 78-month sentence was 

adequate because the public needed to understand that commonplace fraud 

schemes such as this one carried serious consequences and that the sentence would 

promote respect for the law and provide just punishment. The district court also 

noted that it had denied Jacques’s request for a non-prison sentence or a downward 

variance based on its assessment of the § 3553(a) factors.

Jacques timely appealed.

II. DISCUSSION

A. The Deliberate Ignorance Jury Instruction

Jacques argues that the district court erred by instructing the jury on 

deliberate ignorance because the facts do not support the instruction. He argues 

that he did not know about the fraud committed by the other conspirators and that 

the government presented no evidence that he knew his own actions were illegal or 

that he deliberately avoided learning the facts.

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We review de novo a challenge to the district court’s jury instructions. 

United States v. Stone, 9 F.3d 934, 937 (11th Cir. 1993). “[D]istrict courts have 

broad discretion in formulating jury instructions provided that the charge as a 

whole accurately reflects the law and the facts.” United States v. Williams, 526 

F.3d 1312, 1320 (11th Cir. 2008) (quotation omitted). “[W]e will not reverse a 

conviction on the basis of a jury charge unless the issues of law were presented 

inaccurately, or the charge improperly guided the jury in such a substantial way as 

to violate due process.” United States v. Prather, 205 F.3d 1265, 1270 (11th Cir. 

2000) (citation and quotation marks omitted). “If the instructions accurately reflect 

the law, we give the [district] court wide discretion in determining the style and 

wording of the instructions.” Williams, 526 F.3d at 1321.

“[A] deliberate ignorance instruction is appropriate when the facts support 

the inference that the defendant was aware of a high probability of the existence of 

the fact in question and purposefully contrived to avoid learning all of the facts in 

order to have a defense in the event of a subsequent prosecution.” United States v. 

Garcia-Bercovich, 582 F.3d 1234, 1237 (11th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. 

Perez-Tosta, 36 F.3d 1552, 1564 (11th Cir. 1994)). This standard is the same for 

both direct and circumstantial evidence. United States v. Arias, 984 F.2d 1139, 

1143 (11th Cir. 1993). An erroneous deliberate ignorance instruction is harmless if 

the jury was properly instructed that finding deliberate ignorance requires proof 

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beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury was instructed on a theory of actual 

knowledge, and there was sufficient evidence to support that theory. Stone, 9 F.3d 

at 937–38; United States v. Steed, 548 F.3d 961, 977 (11th Cir. 2008).

Here, the district court did not err when it gave a deliberate ignorance jury 

instruction. Numerous pieces of evidence support the inference that Jacques was 

aware of a high probability that his conduct was illegal and that he purposefully 

avoided learning all of the facts. For example, many checks addressed to other 

people arrived at Jacques’s residence and other properties he owned, and he 

brought those checks to Jahira’s and either deposited them into multiple bank 

accounts that he had opened or gave them to another conspirator to deposit. The 

checks were not obviously related to Jahira’s business. Jacques opened a bank 

account in the name of a shell company. He was present at Jahira’s while the other

conspirators were preparing fraudulent tax returns and fraudulently endorsing tax 

refund checks. Taken together, these facts provide circumstantial evidence that 

Jacques attempted to remain ignorant of the legality of his own actions and the 

source of the money while allowing the other conspirators to continue operating. 

Accordingly, the district court’s deliberate ignorance instruction was not 

erroneous.1

1 Even if the deliberate ignorance instruction was erroneous, any error that may have 

resulted was harmless because the district court also included an instruction on actual knowledge 

to the jury. See Stone, 9 F.3d at 937–38; Steed, 548 F.3d 977.

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B. Jacques’s Request for a Downward Variance

Jacques argues that the district court abused its discretion by denying his 

request for a downward variance. He asserts that his lack of criminal history and 

poor health support his request for a downward variance and that the district court 

had discretion under U.S.S.G. § 5K2.202 to grant his request.

We lack jurisdiction to review a district court’s decision to deny a request 

for a downward variance unless the district court incorrectly believed that it lacked 

the authority to grant the variance. United States v. Dudley, 463 F.3d 1221, 1228 

(11th Cir. 2006) (citing United States v. Winningear, 422 F.3d 1241, 1245 (11th 

Cir. 2005)). We have further explained that “when nothing in the record indicates 

otherwise, we assume the sentencing court understood it had authority to depart 

downward.” Id. (quoting United States v. Chase, 174 F.3d 1193, 1195 (11th Cir. 

1999)). Jacques points to nothing in the transcript of the sentencing proceedings 

that indicates that the district court believed it lacked the authority to grant a 

downward variance. To the contrary, the district court analyzed the 18 U.S.C. 

§ 3553(a) factors and determined that Jacques’s sentence was sufficient to satisfy 

2

 U.S.S.G. § 5K2.20 provides, in relevant part, that:

The court may depart downward under this policy statement only if the defendant 

committed a single criminal occurrence or single criminal transaction that (1) was 

committed without significant planning; (2) was of limited duration; and (3) represents a 

marked deviation by the defendant from an otherwise law-abiding life.

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those factors while remaining on the low end of the guidelines range. That

analysis suggests to us that the district court understood that it had discretion to 

grant a downward variance but chose not to do so. Thus, we do not have 

jurisdiction to review the merits of Jacques’s request for a downward variance.

* * *

For these reasons, we affirm.

AFFIRMED.

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