FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

VIVIAN TAT, AKA Vivian Lnu,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-50034

D.C. No.

2:14-cr-00702-

ODW-2

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Otis D. Wright II, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted March 4, 2021

Submission Withdrawn April 7, 2021

Resubmitted October 14, 2021

Pasadena, California

Filed October 21, 2021

Before: Susan P. Graber and Eric D. Miller, Circuit 

Judges, and Timothy Hillman,* District Judge.

Opinion by Judge Graber

* The Honorable Timothy Hillman, United States District Judge for 

the District of Massachusetts, sitting by designation.
2 UNITED STATES V. TAT

SUMMARY**

Criminal Law

The panel reversed a conviction on one count of making 

a false entry in bank records in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1005 

(Count 3), affirmed a conviction on a second count of the 

same offense (Count 2), and remanded for resentencing in a 

case in which Vivian Tat aided a money-laundering scheme 

involving cashier’s checks while she managed a branch of 

East West Bank in San Gabriel, California.

The panel reversed the conviction on Count 3, which was 

premised on a bank log record stating that Tat’s customer 

purchased and then returned three cashier’s checks for a sum 

of $25,000. The government acknowledged that the record 

did not contain a literal falsehood. The record did not 

contain an omission such that the bank’s records would not 

indicate the true nature of the transaction, and it could not be 

said that the bank would not have a picture of the bank’s true 

condition without knowing that its customer had come into 

a large amount of cash that she opted not to deposit. Noting 

that 18 U.S.C. § 1956—not § 1005— outlaws money 

laundering, the panel explained that accurate records 

reflecting a customer’s purchase of a cashier’s check from 

her bank account are not false entries under § 1005 solely 

because that check has a nexus to money laundering. 

The panel affirmed the conviction on Count 2 because a 

reasonable juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt that 

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.
UNITED STATES V. TAT 3

Tat knew the log record on which it was based contained a 

false entry for the simple reason that it listed a fictitious 

payee.

The panel affirmed Tat’s and her codefendant’s 

convictions for conspiring to launder money in a 

concurrently filed memorandum disposition.

COUNSEL

Erwin Chemerinsky (argued), University of California, 

Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, California; David K. 

Willingham, King & Spalding LLP, Los Angeles, 

California; Michael V. Schafler and Allysa D. Bell, Cohen 

Williams LLP, Los Angeles, California; for DefendantAppellant.

Bram Alden (argued), Deputy Chief, Criminal Appeals 

Section; L. Ashley Aull, Chief, Criminal Appeals Section; 

Tracy L. Wilkison, Acting United States Attorney; United 

States Attorney’s Office, Los Angeles, California; for 

Plaintiff-Appellee.

OPINION

GRABER, Circuit Judge:

Defendant Vivian Tat aided a money-laundering scheme 

involving cashier’s checks while she managed a branch of 

East West Bank in San Gabriel, California. A jury convicted 

her on one count of conspiring to launder money, in violation 

of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h), and on two counts of making false 

entries in the bank’s records, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 
4 UNITED STATES V. TAT

§ 1005. She timely appeals. In this opinion, we address her 

argument that insufficient evidence supported the false-entry 

convictions.1 Reviewing de novo, United States v. Rocha, 

598 F.3d 1144, 1153 (9th Cir. 2010), we agree with her only 

in part: sufficient evidence supported one of the convictions 

but not the other. We therefore reverse the unsupported 

conviction and remand the case for resentencing.

BACKGROUND

This appeal stems from a sting operation to uncover 

money laundering near Los Angeles. In 2014, the 

government indicted Ruimin Zhao; Raymond Tan, who is 

Zhao’s husband; and Defendant for conspiring to launder 

$25,500 in 2009. Four years later, the government added 

two counts that accused Defendant Tat of making false 

entries in the bank’s records.

The scheme went this way: Jimmy Yip, the 

government’s informant and a former racketeer, persuaded 

Tan to convert proceeds from Yip’s purported drug sales into 

cashier’s checks. Yip’s money actually came from the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”). In exchange, Yip 

would pay Tan $4500. Tan said that he was the man for the 

job because his wife knew an insider at a local bank: 

Defendant. Tan and Yip agreed that the checks would be 

made out to a fictitious “Oscar Santana.”

Defendant, meanwhile, knew that one of her customers 

sought a way to withdraw a large amount of cash without 

showing the withdrawal on her account. (The customer 

1 We affirm Defendant’s and her codefendant’s convictions for 

conspiring to launder money in a concurrently filed memorandum 

disposition.
UNITED STATES V. TAT 5

wanted to shield it in her divorce proceedings.) Defendant 

proposed a trade: if the customer drew $25,500 in three 

cashier’s checks from her account, Defendant knew 

someone who would pay off-the-books cash for them. The 

customer agreed.

Yip, wearing a secret camera, met the coconspirators in 

one of the bank’s conference rooms on December 14, 2009. 

Yip’s money was counted, the cashier’s checks were signed, 

and all sides went on their way. But Defendant’s customer 

thought something felt off—why did she have to make the 

checks out to an Oscar Santana? She asked Defendant to 

reverse the transactions.

The bank’s logs, presented as Exhibit 48 at trial, 

document both the checks’ purchase and their return. The 

logs record that, on December 14, the customer purchased 

three cashier’s checks worth a combined $25,500 and then 

reversed those transactions. At trial, the government elicited 

testimony that (1) Yip gave the customer $25,500; (2) the 

customer drew $25,500 in cashier’s checks from her 

account; (3) Defendant gave those cashier’s checks to Yip; 

and (4) Defendant reversed the transactions at the customer’s 

request.

Timothy Truong, the bank’s custodian of records, 

testified that, although the logs contained in Exhibit 48 can 

show the account from which the cashier’s checks were 

drawn, those logs cannot show the source of any 

simultaneously received cash that the customer did not 

deposit. In other words, Truong testified that those logs 

could not disclose Yip’s involvement.

After the original checks were returned, Tan and Zhao, 

working with Defendant, obtained replacement cashier’s 

checks in their own names. One of those replacement checks 
6 UNITED STATES V. TAT

was documented in the bank’s logs, which the government 

introduced as Exhibit 47 at trial. That log shows that, on 

December 14, Zhao drew a $7500 cashier’s check payable 

to “Oscar Santana” from the account of her facial and 

massage business. At trial, the government elicited 

testimony that Zhao went to the bank; deposited $7500 in 

cash; purchased a cashier’s check for $7500 with a check 

from her business account; and then gave that cashier’s 

check to Tan, who gave it to Yip. Zhao’s account lacked 

sufficient funds to cover the cashier’s check before her 

deposit of Yip’s money.

Truong testified that the logs shown in Exhibit 47 do not 

allow the bank’s employees to list the source of a purchaser’s 

funds. In other words, Truong testified that the logs can 

show that a customer paid for the cashier’s check in cash, 

but they cannot show that cash’s source. The government 

also presented evidence that the check from Zhao’s business 

account, used to draw the cashier’s check, featured 

Defendant’s handwriting.

Tan pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money. 

Defendant and Zhao went to trial. The jury convicted them 

both of conspiring to launder money, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(h), 

and it convicted Defendant of two counts (Counts 2 and 3) 

of making a false entry in a bank’s records, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 1005.

DISCUSSION

Defendant argues that insufficient evidence supports her 

false-entry convictions. We “must consider the evidence 

presented at trial in the light most favorable to the 

prosecution.” United States v. Nevils, 598 F.3d 1158, 1164 

(9th Cir. 2010) (en banc). We then “must determine whether 

this evidence, so viewed, is adequate to allow ‘any rational 
UNITED STATES V. TAT 7

trier of fact [to find] the essential elements of the crime 

beyond a reasonable doubt.’” Id. (alteration in original) 

(emphasis omitted) (quoting Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 

307, 319 (1979)). If the evidence fails at that second step, 

we must reverse. Id. at 1165.

Our analysis of a criminal statute begins with its text. 

United States v. Price, 980 F.3d 1211, 1218 (9th Cir. 2019). 

As relevant here, § 1005 criminalizes:

mak[ing] any false entry in any book, report, 

or statement of such bank, company, branch, 

agency, or organization with intent to injure 

or defraud such bank, company, branch, 

agency, or organization, or any other 

company, body politic or corporate, or any 

individual person, or to deceive any officer of 

such bank, company, branch, agency, or 

organization, or the Comptroller of the 

Currency, or the Federal Deposit Insurance 

Corporation, or any agent or examiner 

appointed to examine the affairs of such 

bank, company, branch, agency, or 

organization, or the Board of Governors of 

the Federal Reserve System[.]

§ 1005 (emphases added). Thus, the government must prove 

that “(1) [D]efendant made a false entry in bank records, 

caused it to be made, or aided and abetted its entry; 

(2) [D]efendant knew the entry was false when it was made; 

and (3) [D]efendant intended that the entry injure or deceive 

a bank or public official.” United States v. Wolf, 820 F.2d 

1499, 1504 (9th Cir. 1987). The parties dispute only whether 

the government proved falsity.
8 UNITED STATES V. TAT

The Supreme Court held, more than a century ago, that 

“the making of a false entry is a concrete offense, which is 

not committed where the transaction entered actually took 

place, and is entered exactly as it occurred.” Coffin v. United 

States, 156 U.S. 432, 463 (1895). But courts have expanded 

the reach of § 1005 (and its predecessor, 12 U.S.C. § 592) 

beyond literal falsity; “material omissions are false 

statements for the purposes of” the statute. United States v. 

Ely, 142 F.3d 1113, 1119 (9th Cir. 1997); see United States 

v. Darby, 289 U.S. 224, 226 (1933) (holding that § 592’s 

“aim was to give assurance that upon an inspection of a bank, 

public officers and others would discover in its books of 

account a picture of its true condition”).

In the context of fraudulent loans, such an omission 

might include “focus[ing] on whether the transaction is real 

and substantial as opposed to merely formal.” United States 

v. Krepps, 605 F.2d 101, 109 (3d Cir. 1979). That reasoning 

makes sense with respect to loans—where the concern is that 

hiding information from officials prevents them from 

assessing a bank’s exposure. See id. (holding that “those 

who are charged by law with the examination of these 

records have a significant interest in obtaining a full picture 

of the bank’s actual condition”). For example, we held that 

a bank executive caused a false entry under § 592 when he 

directed an uncompensated straw man to obtain a loan—

disbursed as a cashier’s check—because that straw man 

(1) was unqualified for the loan; (2) had no plans to repay 

the loan; and (3) immediately gave the cashier’s check to the 

defendant. Hargreaves v. United States, 75 F.2d 68, 70–71 

(9th Cir. 1935). Because the transaction was “fictitious,” the 

bank’s “records would not indicate the true nature of the 

transaction” and, thus, contained a false entry. Id. at 72. 

Likewise, § 1005 criminalizes the omission of one’s true 

purpose in seeking a loan. Wolf, 820 F.2d at 1503–04.
UNITED STATES V. TAT 9

But we agree with the Fifth Circuit that the same 

reasoning does not necessarily apply to banks’ accurate 

records of customers’ withdrawals. In United States v. 

Manderson, 511 F.2d 179 (5th Cir. 1975), the defendant was 

an employee of a mortgage company who sought to extort a 

contractor before releasing the payment for a home’s repairs. 

Id. at 180. The contractor, knowing extortion when he saw 

it, contacted the mortgage company’s bank, which in turn 

contacted the FBI. Id. The FBI provided the contractor with 

marked bills, which the contractor then paid to the 

defendant. Id. The defendant released the funds for the 

repairs to the contractor and documented that transaction in 

the mortgage company’s checkbook. Id.

The Fifth Circuit held that the defendant’s checkbook 

entry was not a false entry under § 1005. Id.

The checkbook stub correctly reflected the 

date, the payees, for what the check was 

issued, its application to the escrow account, 

the account number, and the amount. There 

was no false entry unless it can be said that 

appellant’s attempt to enrich himself at the 

expense of [the contractor] and [the 

homeowner] rendered it such. There was no 

attempt to defraud [the mortgage company] 

or the Bank and neither was defrauded. 

Appellant correctly reflected the transaction 

in the books of the Bank.

Id. Because the bank’s record is “the very entry that should 

have been made had there been no later effort to extort,” that 

record is not “lacking in verity.” Id. at 181. In other words, 

that an accurately recorded bank transaction has a nexus to 

unlawful activity does not, standing alone, make all entries 
10 UNITED STATES V. TAT

related to that transaction “false” within the meaning of 

§ 1005. Other courts have held the same. “[A]n entry is not 

false merely because the underlying transaction is illegal,”

United States v. Gleason, 616 F.2d 2, 29 (2d Cir. 1979); 

“questionable,” United States v. Hardin, 841 F.2d 694, 699 

(6th Cir. 1988); “manipulative,” id.; or “fraudulent,” United 

States v. Erickson, 601 F.2d 296, 302 (7th Cir. 1979). We 

agree with our sister circuits’ analysis on that point. We 

turn, then, to applying those principles to Defendant’s 

convictions for making false entries in violation of § 1005.

A. Count 3

Count 3 is premised on the bank’s log shown in Exhibit 

48. That log states that Defendant’s customer purchased and 

then returned three cashier’s checks for a sum of $25,500. 

The government acknowledges that the record does not 

contain a literal falsehood.

Nor does Exhibit 48 contain an omission such that the 

bank’s “records would not indicate the true nature of the 

transaction.” Hargreaves, 75 F.2d at 72. The government 

argues that our decision in Hargreaves controls here. We 

disagree. Although Hargreaves mentions a “cashier’s 

check,” it really is a case about a fraudulent loan; the bank 

was duped into lending money to an unworthy borrower. Id.

at 70. As we recently held in another case concerning the 

scope of § 1005, the entry in Hargreaves implicated our 

often-expressed concern that banks need to know borrowers’

true identities. United States v. Yates, No. 18-30183, 2021 

WL 4699251, at *11 (9th Cir. October 8, 2021) (citing 

Hargreaves, 75 F.2d at 70, 72). Count 3 causes no such 

concern.

The only witness to testify on the matter stated that 

Defendant could not have disclosed the source of the 
UNITED STATES V. TAT 11

customer’s unbanked cash on the log contained in Exhibit 

48. “The form does not call for a narrative response, allow 

for comment, . . . or ask for the source of a payment” to the 

customer. Id. at *12. She could disclose only that the 

customer purchased and returned cashier’s checks. The 

government points to no document related to the cashier’s 

checks in question that Defendant completed falsely or that 

she should have completed but did not. Cf. United States v. 

Cordell, 912 F.2d 769, 773–74 (5th Cir. 1990) (holding that 

a bank manager violated § 1005 when he declined to file a 

required overdraft notice so that he could conceal from his 

supervisors a violation of federal lending limits); United 

States v. McAnally, 666 F.2d 1116, 1118 (7th Cir. 1981) 

(holding that the bank’s employee violated § 1005 by failing 

to record a loan even if “there was no false entry in a literal 

sense”).

It also cannot be said that East West Bank would not 

have “a picture of [the bank’s] true condition,” Darby, 

289 U.S. at 226, without knowing that its customer had come 

into a large amount of cash that she opted not to deposit. 

Cashier’s checks—unlike loans—cannot be issued until the 

bank receives funds. The bank would know that a real 

customer drew a real cashier’s check from the undisputed 

balance of her real account. How one chooses to “dispose of 

the fund[s] so obtained should, in the absence of 

misrepresentation on h[er] part, be of no interest to the bank, 

and certainly not to the criminal law.” Krepps, 605 F.2d 

at 106.

Indeed, Exhibit 48 is “the very entry that should have 

been made had there been no” prior effort to launder money. 

Manderson, 511 F.2d at 181. If Defendant’s customer 

purchased a cashier’s check and gave it to Yip in exchange 

for a used car, Exhibit 48 would look the same. Even if 
12 UNITED STATES V. TAT

Defendant made the entries with an intent to deceive bank 

officials, that satisfies only one of §1005’s three elements. 

Wolf, 820 F.2d at 1504. An intent to deceive is the offense’s 

mens rea, not the entire offense. It is no answer that the 

cashier’s check was related to a money laundering scheme; 

§ 1956—not § 1005—outlaws money laundering. Accurate 

records reflecting a customer’s purchase of a cashier’s check 

from her bank account are not false entries under § 1005 

solely because that check has a nexus to money laundering. 

We thus reverse Defendant’s conviction on Count 3.

B. Count 2

Count 2 is premised on the bank’s log shown in Exhibit 

47. The log shows that, on December 14, Zhao deposited 

$7500 (of the FBI’s money) and then drew a cashier’s check 

payable to “Oscar Santana” for that same amount. A 

reasonable juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt that 

Defendant knew that Exhibit 47, the basis of Count 2, 

contained a false entry for the simple reason that it listed a 

fictitious payee. That fact is sufficient to sustain a 

conviction under the principles described above; the 

transaction itself is “false and fictitious” and “concocted for 

the very purpose of distorting [a] financial statement.” 

Yates, 2021 WL 4699251, at *11 (alteration in original) 

(quoting Gleason, 616 F.2d at 29). Indeed, as the 

government argued to the jury, “on its face, [we] know why 

it’s false, because here it shows a cashier’s check in the 

amount of $7500 to Oscar Santana.” And § 1005 

criminalizes the making of “any” false entry with the 

requisite mens rea. The jury was not required to accept 

Defendant’s argument that she did not know that the name 

was fictitious.

Unlike in Manderson, the log does not “correctly 

reflect[] . . . the payee[] . . . [or] for what the check was 
UNITED STATES V. TAT 13

issued.” 511 F.2d at 180. And unlike the log in Exhibit 48, 

the log in Exhibit 47 gave Defendant the opportunity to 

disclose that information. Thus, there is no “absence of 

misrepresentation,” and the log very much is of “interest to 

the bank, and . . . the criminal law.” Krepps, 605 F.2d 

at 106. We thus affirm Defendant’s conviction on Count 2.

We REVERSE Defendant’s conviction on Count 3; 

AFFIRM her conviction on Count 2; and REMAND for 

resentencing.