Opinion ID: 6929859
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Momi Kumalae

Text: Kumalae was convicted of conspiracy and three counts of bank fraud in connection with various actions she took while working as an assistant to Brandon at Dean Street. 46 The evidence establishing Kumalae’s knowledge of Bay Loan’s down payment requirement and the scheme to fraudulently violate it is the following: (1) Brandon testified that he told Kumalae about his relationship with Bay Loan; (2) an East West employee testified that she asked Kumalae to forward information about the unit buyers so that she could satisfy the guidelines established by Bay Loan; (3) Kumalae was present during some of the conversations between Brandon, Ward, Hagopian and a buyer in which down payments were discussed; (4) Kumalae was also present at a meeting at which Brandon said “they needed to show down payments or something so they were going to wire money into the accounts or deposit it and they needed one of our checks to prove that it came out of our account”; (5) Kumalae told one buyer that she needed a check from him and that she would be “doing the transactions at the banks”; (6) Kumalae assured one buyer whose down payment check had not been negotiated that his check had not been used; and, (7) Kumalae instructed another Dean Street employee, Marie Lynch, who had asked about the discharges of the second mortgages that “there weren’t supposed to be any second mortgages and to just don’t worry about it. They were being taken care of.” The evidence that she willfully participated in this scheme is as follows: (1) Kumalae advised buyers of how their down payment requirement would be satisfied; 47 (2) she once wired money from her own account to a buyer in order to fund his down payment; 48 (3) she signed several of the mortgage discharge letters provided to the buyers; 49 and, (4) she received some of the down payment cheeks, and because several of these checks were deposited directly into Reisch’s account, presumably by Kumalae, she effected the return of down payment funds to their source in violation of the down payment requirement. All of this evidence is sufficient to support Kumalae’s bank fraud and conspiracy convictions. Kumalae attempts to rely on cases holding that a defendant’s mere presence at the scene of the crime or mere association with criminals to whom all the evidence at trial pertains is insufficient to support a conviction for conspiracy. United States v. Ocampo, 964 F.2d 80 (1st Cir.1992); United States v. Mehtala, 578 F.2d 6, 10 (1st Cir.1978); United States v. Joiner, 429 F.2d 489, 493 (5th Cir.1970). Kumalae’s reliance on these cases is misplaced because the government’s case rested on Kumalae’s own knowledge of the scheme to defraud based on her own statements to others and on a series of actions taken by Kumalae herself that directly defrauded Bay Loan. Kumalae’s argument that she was just acting in good faith by performing ministerial duties for Dean Street and nothing more also fails. The record is clear that Kumalae wired down payment funds to buyers from her own account and signed mortgage discharge letters. These actions were not merely “ministerial duties.”