NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

 v. 

TAMARA DADYAN, 

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 21-50297 

D.C. No. 

2:20-cr-00579-SVW-4 

MEMORANDUM*

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

Stephen V. Wilson, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted May 13, 2024

Pasadena, California

Before: GILMAN,** GOULD, and MENDOZA, Circuit Judges.

Tamara Dadyan pleaded guilty to three offenses stemming from her 

involvement in a conspiracy to fraudulently obtain and launder millions of dollars 

of federal emergency-loan assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Just before 

she was scheduled to begin her 130-month term of imprisonment, Dadyan fled to 

* This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent 

except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

** The Honorable Ronald Lee Gilman, United States Circuit Judge for 

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.

FILED

JUN 27 2024

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
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Montenegro using falsified travel documents. She was eventually located by the 

FBI and extradited back to the United States. Dadyan now challenges the district 

court’s denial of her motion to withdraw her guilty plea and the length of her 

sentence. We DISMISS Dadyan’s appeal under the fugitive-disentitlement 

doctrine.

1. The contemporaneous opinion published in United States 

v. Terabelian (No. 21-50291), applies the fugitive-disentitlement doctrine to 

dismiss the appeal of one of Dadyan’s coconspirators. We apply that same 

reasoning here and DISMISS Dadyan’s appeal. 

Despite doing so, we recognize that “the disentitlement doctrine may well 

bar otherwise meritorious claims.” See Katz v. United States, 920 F.2d 610, 613 

(9th Cir. 1990). Such is not the situation in the present case for the reasons set 

forth below.

2. Dadyan’s plea agreement contained a waiver that encompassed her 

right to appeal the district court’s denial of her motion to withdraw her guilty plea. 

The district court properly advised Dadyan regarding the effects of the plea 

agreement and waiver pursuant to Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal 

Procedure. It also determined that her lawyer’s testimony that he was adequately 

prepared for trial was credible. The record further shows that her lawyer 

encouraged, but did not coerce, Dadyan to accept a plea deal, and that Dadyan 
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frequently expressed her desire to avoid trial. 

Dadyan’s lawyer was under indictment for his involvement in an unrelated 

drug conspiracy. The district court conducted a hearing to examine any potential 

conflict arising from the lawyer’s indictment, and it determined that Dadyan 

knowingly and voluntarily waived any such conflict. 

For all of the above reasons, we would have enforced the terms of Dadyan’s 

plea agreement had we not dismissed this appeal on the basis of the 

fugitive-disentitlement doctrine.

3. The district court correctly calculated Dadyan’s Guidelines range by 

applying a 16-level enhancement for the loss amount. See U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b). 

This calculation was done in consideration of the loss inflicted by the overall 

conspiracy—a loss that was reasonably foreseeable to Dadyan. See United States 

v. Treadwell, 593 F.3d 990, 1002 (9th Cir. 2010) (“[A] district court may not 

automatically hold an individual defendant responsible for losses attributable to the 

entire conspiracy, but rather must identify the loss that fell within the scope of the 

defendant’s agreement with his co-conspirators and was reasonably foreseeable to 

the defendant.”). 

Nor did the district court abuse its discretion by failing to reduce Dadyan’s

sentence for acceptance of responsibility because Dadyan continued to minimize 

her role in the conspiracy. Furthermore, although Dadyan’s sentence exceeded the 
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top of the Sentencing Guidelines’ recommended range by nine months, the 

sentence was substantively reasonable because the record shows that the court fully 

considered all of the relevant 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors. 

We therefore would have affirmed the judgment of the district court had we 

not dismissed her appeal under the fugitive-disentitlement doctrine.

DISMISSED.