Opinion ID: 613010
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mubayyid's Claims

Text: Mubayyid makes several challenges to his convictions on appeal. First, he argues that his convictions for filing false tax returns and for obstructing the functions of the IRS rest on his answer to a tax-form question that is fundamentally ambiguous, precluding the jury from finding deliberate falsity. Second, he challenges the legal sufficiency of the government's evidence on his conviction for scheming to conceal material facts from the IRS. Finally, he claims that he was prejudiced on all counts by the admission of a recorded phone conversation in which another speaker urged him to remove Care's documents from the storage unit eventually searched by the FBI. [31]
Mubayyid was convicted on three counts (Counts 3-5) of filing false tax returns, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1), and one count (Count 8) of corruptly endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue laws, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7212(a). All four counts rest on Mubayyid's answers to Question 76 on Care's Form 990 for the tax years 1997, 1999, and 2000. Question 76 asks, Did the organization engage in any activity not previously reported to the IRS? If `Yes,' attach a detailed description of each activity. The instructions accompanying Form 990 clarified the inquiry as follows: Attach a statement explaining any significant changes in the kind of activities the organization conducts to further its exempt purpose. Include new or modified activities not listed as current or planned in the organization's application for recognition of exemption [IRS Form 1023], or not yet reported to the IRS by a letter to its key district director or by an attachment to the organization's return for any earlier year. Also include any major program activities that are being discontinued. For each of the charged years, Mubayyid answered No to Question 76. The government alleges that, in so doing, he intentionally concealed from the IRS the fact that Care was engaged in activities involving the solicitation and expenditure of funds to support and promote the mujahideen and jihad. To support a conviction for filing false tax returns, the government was required to prove, inter alia, that Mubayyid filed a return that was false as to a material matter and that he signed the return willfully and knowing it was false. United States v. Boulerice, 325 F.3d 75, 79-80 (1st Cir.2003) (quoting United States v. LaSpina, 299 F.3d 165, 179 (2d Cir. 2002)). Count 8 charged the same underlying conduct, with a purpose to obstruct or impede the due administration of the Internal Revenue laws. United States v. Marek, 548 F.3d 147, 150 (1st Cir.2008). The filing of false tax documents to mask an organization's non-charitable purposes falls within the purview of § 7212. See United States v. Mitchell, 985 F.2d 1275, 1279 (4th Cir.1993). Thus, for all four tax-filing charges, the government needed to show that Mubayyid knew when he answered Question 76 on Care's Form 990 for the 1997, 1999, and 2000 tax years that the answer was false. [32] The government argued at trial that Question 76 required the reporting of any activities ever conducted by Care that had not previously been reported. Mubayyid asserts that he reasonably understood the question to require reporting only of changes in Care's activities and only when those changes occurred during the single tax year for which the Form 990 was filed. Mubayyid's version of the question is thus more limited both temporallycovering only one year, rather than the organization's lifetimeand in contentcovering only new undertakings or activities that had significantly changed from the previous year, rather than all activities Care had not previously reported. Mubayyid maintains that, under his version of the question, the record does not allow a finding beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew his answers on the tax forms were false. Mubayyid thus claims that the government failed to show that his answers were willfully false because Question 76 is fundamentally ambiguous and, hence, cannot legally support a jury's finding that his answer was willfully false. It is not unusual for the defendant in cases such as this to argue that the question he is alleged to have answered falsely was ambiguous, that his understanding of the question differed from the government's, and that, under his understanding, he answered the question truthfully. United States v. Posada Carriles, 541 F.3d 344, 362 (5th Cir.2008). Traditionally, it is the province of the jury to decide whether the defendant intended to and did in fact give a response that was literally false. United States v. Richardson, 421 F.3d 17, 33 (1st Cir.2005) (quoting United States v. Finucan, 708 F.2d 838, 848 (1st Cir.1983)) (internal quotation mark omitted). We have recognized, however, that in the exceptional case a question may be so fundamentally ambiguous as to foreclose a jury's resolution of a perjury or false statement charge because it could never be said that one intended to answer such a question untruthfully. Id. (quoting United States v. DeZarn, 157 F.3d 1042, 1049 (6th Cir.1998)). As we shall explain, this is not such a case. Any ambiguity in the substantive scope of Question 76 is, at most, the sort of imprecision that is appropriately evaluated by a jury. As for the question's temporal scope, any ambiguity is irrelevant to our analysis because the government produced sufficient evidence for a jury to find that Mubayyid provided false answers to the question even as he claims to have understood it. We expand on these two conclusions in turn.
As noted, Question 76 asks simply whether the organization engage[d] in any activity not previously reported to the IRS. In elaborating on the reporting obligation, the guiding instructions demand an explanation of any significant changes in the kind of activities the organization conducts to further its exempt purpose. Taking his lead from the instructions, Mubayyid argues that the question asks only about changes, and that he was thus not required to report activities that were ongoing and unchanged, even if they had never previously been included in Care's filings. He asserts that Care had engaged in no new activities in the relevant tax years, and that his answer to Question 76 could therefore not be found to be false. We consider this view of Question 76 to be unreasonable. A straightforward reading of Form 990 and its instructions makes plain that Question 76 seeks the disclosure of information about activities not accurately depicted in the organization's application for recognition of exemption, Form 1023, or in any other year's return. Indeed, reading Question 76 together with Form 1023 confirms that, in posing Question 76, the IRS's purpose was to require organizations to update their initial filings on an annual basis. Like Question 76, Form 1023 contains a broad request for information regarding every activity of the organization. It asks organizations to provide a detailed narrative description of all the activities of the organization. It instructs filers to list each activity separately in order of importance and to include, as a minimum, (a) a detailed description of the activity including its purpose; (b) when the activity was or will be initiated; and (c) where and by whom the activity will be conducted. The interpretation of Question 76 advanced by Mubayyid would defeat the IRS's clear intent to obtain an accurate, current report of the organization's activities. It defies common sense to conclude that the IRS sought, under penalty of perjury, detailed information about a tax-exempt organization's activities if begun, altered, or ended in the current tax year, but that it was wholly uninterested in such an organization's ongoing, previously unreported activities if begun in any other year. Hence, in context, the instruction's references to changes cannot reasonably be understood to circumscribe the broad request for disclosure of any activity required by the text of Question 76 itself. Mubayyid's proffered reading does not take into account the IRS's justifiable assumption, built into the instruction, that an organization would have complied with its obligation to disclose previously existing reportable activities in either its Form 1023 or in a prior Form 990. In other words, the instructions focus on significant changes because the IRS expects that changes will be the only information not previously reported. The question itself, however, clearly requires disclosure of any activity not previously reported to the IRS. Further, the request in the instruction for disclosure even of those activities that are being discontinued highlights that the IRS is seeking to correct and update all information previously submitted to it about the organization's activities. A defendant who has previously filed a fraudulent or incomplete return, in contravention of the government's reasonable expectation, may not then `twist the meaning of a question in his own mind into some totally unrecognizable shape and then hide behind it' by alleging its fundamental ambiguity. Richardson, 421 F.3d at 35 (quoting United States v. Reveron Martinez, 836 F.2d 684, 691 (1st Cir.1988)). In urging an interpretation of Question 76 that disregards its obvious context, Mubayyid falls far short of demonstrating a fundamental ambiguity that would preclude a jury's evaluation of his defense. Of course, a defendant is entitled to argue even an unreasonable interpretation of a question to the jury. [33] Here, Mubayyid did so, and the jury rejected it. But the unreasonableness of his claimed interpretation shows that Question 76 is, at most, only arguably ambiguous. Where a question is only arguably ambiguous, the issue of the defendant's guilt is properly one for the jury. Id. at 33. There is no question that sufficient evidence supported the jury's rejection of Mubayyid's claim that he understood Question 76 to require reporting only of changes. The jury reasonably could have found that Mubayyid, as Care's treasurer, understood the context described above and, specifically, knew that the IRS sought through Question 76 to determine whether the organization remained entitled to its charitable tax status. To that end, the IRS plainly needed to know what the organization was currently doing. The interpretation Mubayyid posits is so inconsistent with the plain intent of the question when considered in context thatparticularly given his role as the organization's financial managera reasonable jury could readily reject his claim that he understood the question in the way he describes. In sum, we conclude that Question 76 is, at most, only arguably ambiguous in its demand that the filer advise the IRS of all activities, not simply changes. It was well within the jury's capability to find that Mubayyid in fact understood that the obligation imposed by Question 76 required reporting of more than just Care's new or modified activities.
At trial, the government's position was that Question 76 required a Form 990 filer to disclose any previously unreported activity in which the filing organization had ever engaged, irrespective of whether that activity had taken place during the year that was the subject of its tax filing. Mubayyid argues that the question is reasonably understood to require reporting only of activities occurring during the subject tax year. He asserts that common sense argues that if one is filing a 1999 tax form the questions pertain to 1999. Mubayyid's claim of fundamental ambiguity with respect to the temporal scope of Question 76 need not detain us. A question is not fundamentally ambiguous if a reasonable jury, given the language of the question to the defendant and the context in which it was asked, could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew that the answer he gave was false. United States v. Boskic, 545 F.3d 69, 90 (1st Cir.2008); see also Richardson, 421 F.3d at 33 (In determining whether a statement made in response to an ambiguous question could be said to be false, `the context of the question and answer becomes critically important.' (quoting United States v. Farmer, 137 F.3d 1265, 1269 (10th Cir.1998))). Even when the temporal scope of the question is viewed as Mubayyid claims to have understood it, the jury's verdict was supported by the evidence presented at trial. Specifically, as detailed below, the record supports a finding that Mubayyid answered Question 76 falsely by failing to disclose three distinct activities: the publication of the Al-Hussam newsletter in 1997; the operation of Care's website in 1999 and 2000; and, in all three years, an orphan sponsorship program that targeted the families of martyred mujahideen. [34]

It is undisputed that Care published a single issue of the Al-Hussam newsletter in January 1997. Dawn Goldberg, an IRS employee, testified that she would certainly expect the publication of a newsletter such as the Al-Hussam to be disclosed in response to Question 76 because the instructions say it should be, but, also, it's an activity of the organization. She later repeated that she would expect it to have been disclosed because, as we read in the directions, it falls in the category of `program service.' Consistent with this testimony, a thorough reading of the Form 990 instructions illuminates that the phrases activities and major program activities, used in Question 76 and the Form 990 instructions, encompass an organization's newsletters. In explaining a part of the form preceding Question 76, the Form 990 instructions define the term program services as mainly those activities that the reporting organization was created to conduct and which . . . form the basis of the organization's current exemption from tax. That section then includes the following explanation: Program services can also include the organization's unrelated trade or business activities. For example, publishing a magazine is a program service even though the magazine contains . . . advertising, the income from which is taxable as unrelated business income. Similarly, the instruction for Part III, Statement of Program Service Accomplishments, states: A program service is a major (usually ongoing) objective of an organization, such as adoptions, recreation for the elderly, rehabilitation, or publication of journals or newsletters. Specify the service outputs, products, or other measures of a program service, such as clients served, days of care, therapy sessions, or publications issued. Thus, in the full context of the Form 990 instruction, it is clear that the term activity used in Question 76 encompasses all program services, which are by definition major objective[s] of an organization and which, at the very least, include the publication of journals or newsletters. It is also clear that the publication of the Al-Hussam newsletters, in particular, was a major objective of Care. The evidence revealed that thousands of copies of the newsletters were printed and distributed internationally. Witnesses testified to the newsletters' underlying theme of the promotion of jihad. The newsletters contained descriptions of ongoing fighting happening in different corners of the world, interviews of fighters, and encouraging people to participate in the fight and, . . . if they can't participate, to provide funding. The jury heard excerpts from numerous issues of the newsletters in which readers were exhorted to finance the mujahideen if they could not otherwise join the jihad. The government combined this evidence with expert testimony explaining the concept of economic jihad, the belief that individuals who cannot participate in that fighting themselves . . . should at least finance someone who can. A reasonable jury could have considered the centrality of the Al-Hussam newsletters to Care's organizational mission as evidence both that Mubayyid would have recognized that publication of the Al-Hussam was an activity that should be disclosed, and that the Al-Hussam was willfully not disclosed to the IRS precisely because it reflected Care's non-charitable purposes. Mubayyid attempts to obfuscate Question 76's otherwise clear instruction by pointing to testimony by Dawn Goldberg on cross-examination. When questioned about a separate section of the Form 990 that asks filers to segregate the organization's expenses among three categories program services, managerial services, and fundraisingGoldberg admitted that the filer must use some amount of judgment. She acknowledged that, depending on the facts and circumstances, it might not be unreasonable for a filer to identify all of the printing expenses associated with a newsletter as fundraising expenses. Mubayyid claims that the possibility that he reasonably categorized the expense of publishing the Al-Hussam newsletters as a fundraising expense rather than a program service expense invalidates the argument that the newsletters are necessarily program services that would need to be disclosed in response to Question 76. This argument is unavailing. First, Mubayyid did not attribute Care's printing and publication expenses to fundraising on the Form 990 for 1997. Rather, all of Care's printing expenses for that year were categorized as managerial service expenses. The evidence thus belies Mubayyid's claim that his statement was not false because Care had consistently treated the Al-Hussam newsletters as merely a fundraising device, rather than an activity of the organization. Second, even if the attribution of printing expenses in 1997 was a mere scrivener's error, a reasonable jury could have concluded that Care's designation of the Al-Hussam newsletters as a fundraising activity would not have been a reasonable accounting choice. Dawn Goldberg testified that she looked at thirty-five Al-Hussam newsletters and saw a handful, maybe six or eight little blurbs related to fundraising. Referencing the Form 990 instructions' directive to allocate expenses that relate to more than one functional category, she acknowledged that a small amount of [the publication expenses for the Al-Hussam] might be attributable to `fundraising,' but that the newsletter is primarily educational and informative, and should therefore properly be designated as a program service. In light of the Form 990 instructions including the specific example of newsletters as a program service activityand Goldberg's testimony on the inappropriateness of designating the Al-Hussam as a fundraising device, it would have been reasonable for the jury to conclude that the designation instead reflected an intent to conceal Care's true nature. In any event, the jury was entitled to conclude that Mubayyid understood that Question 76's request for any activity of the organization not previously disclosed called for disclosure of Care's publication of the Al-Hussam newsletters, regardless of whether Care was permitted to allocate the associated expenses as fundraising in other parts of the Form 990. Taking another tack, Mubayyid claims that his answer was not false because the Al-Hussam newsletters had arguably already been disclosed to the IRS on Care's initial application for tax exemption, Form 1023, and therefore were not required to be disclosed in answer to Question 76. Here, Mubayyid refers to a statement in Care's initial Form 1023 that the organization's fundraising efforts would comprise [s]ubstantial efforts . . . by means of: . . . mailings. Again, his argument fails. A reasonable jury could have readily concluded that the Al-Hussam newsletters were not, in fact, the type of mailings disclosed to the IRS in the cursory reference to mailings on the Form 1023. To begin with, the Form 1023 refers to such mailings prospectively, yet the evidence at trial demonstrated that two Al-Hussam newsletters had already been published in Care's name at the time the Form 1023 was filed. Likewise, neither the Al-Hussam newsletters nor the Zakat Calculation Guide were submitted with the Form 1023 as representative copies of solicitations for financial support. Moreover, Robert Charnoff, a former IRS employee who had been responsible for reviewing Care's Form 1023 application, testified for the government that fundraising mailings are typically just a one- or two-page solicitation letter, while the evidence presented at trial demonstrated that the Al-Hussam newsletters primarily consisted of multi-page descriptions of the successes of jihad, exhortations to join the fighting, and reminders of the duty to engage in jihad. They contained only a few small blurbs that might be fairly characterized as overt fundraising. On this basis, Charnoff explained that he would have expected the Al-Hussam newsletter to be identified elsewhere because it's an activity in its own right. We thus conclude that, based on the evidence presented at trial, a reasonable jury could find that Mubayyid understood that the Al-Hussam newsletter was required to be disclosed in response to Question 76 on the 1997 Form 990. [35]
The government's evidence at trial showed that, by 1999, Care was operating a website that was described as similar in content to the Al-Hussam newsletters. A witness testified for the government that Mubayyid had approached him in 1997 or 1998 to discuss the construction of a website for Care. The two men worked together over the course of nearly a year on designing and naming the website, and on hiring a local business to host it. According to the witness, Mubayyid provided a CD of content that he wanted uploaded to the website, the witness constructed the website, and he provided Mubayyid with the administrative privileges to modify and update the website once it was up and running. The website was operational by early 1999. The government also introduced printed copies of the content of Care's website as of June 4, 2000, and March 1, 2001. Those printouts reveal that Care was providing regularly updated content to its website's readers. As one example, Care maintained a page entitled News from the Battlefields of Chechnya that provided daily news bulletins throughout late December 1999. The website also republished selected articles from the Al-Hussam newsletters, including a collection explaining the duty of jihad, an article entitled Story of a Muhajid, and an exhortation for readers to Do Something! Additionally, the website contained information about calculating Zakat and a contact page informing readers where to send their donations (with Care's United States tax identification number prominently displayed). In these respects, Care's website effectively replaced the publication of the Al-Hussam newsletter following its discontinuation in 1997. It provided an important communications link between the organization and potential supporters, and it sought to generate affirmative conduct to benefit the mujahideen. Hence, based on the website, the jury properly could have found that Mubayyid knowingly made a false statement about a material matter when he declared that the organization had engaged in no previously unreported activity in 1999 and 2000.
The third activity to which we turn our attention spanned all three years covered by Counts 3-5 and 8, and the alleged falsity was a matter of inaccurate disclosure rather than nondisclosure. Throughout the trial, the government argued that Mubayyid's failure to correct substantial misrepresentations in Care's Form 1023, through the attachments requested in Question 76, concealed the organization's support for and promotion of the mujahideen and jihad. In particular, the government alleged that Care's initial application for tax exemption was false because it failed to disclose to the IRS that Care's orphan sponsorship program focused on the orphans of martyrs. When asked to provide (a) a detailed description of the activity including its purpose,  Muntasser stated in the Form 1023 that Care would develop a program for orphan sponsorship in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Kashmir. Consistent with this representation, each of the Form 990s submitted by Mubayyid reported a substantial amount of cash assistance to orphans and widows. At trial, an expert for the government, who testified that he had reviewed the materials and solicitations associated with Care's orphan sponsorship program, opined that the purpose of the program's focus on the orphans of martyrs was to promote violent jihad: In the context of encouraging people to go and participate in fighting, it's important to remove anything that may prevent them from doing so, to remove disincentives. If a person who is inclined to go fight knows that if something should happen to him that his family would be taken care of, that removes the disincentive, and he's more likely to be able to go and fight. The witness also testified that he had seen similar, targeted solicitations used by organizations to support mujahideen activities many times. This focus was reflected in Care's website solicitation, which depicts a child to be sponsored as an orphan whose father died in defense of the faith. Because orphan sponsorship was, from Care's own perspective, a responsive answer to the call for activities on the Form 1023 and program services on the Form 990s, Mubayyid cannot sensibly deny that it was also an activity within the understood meaning of Question 76. Instead, as with the Al-Hussam newsletter, Mubayyid suggests that this activity had already been disclosed to the IRS on Care's Form 1023 and on Care's Form 990s for previous years. Although those forms did not reveal that the organization's orphan sponsorship focused on the children of martyred fighters, Mubayyid argues that, because the Form 1023 disclosed that the program would focus on orphans in war-torn countries, [i]t is no great inferential leap to conclude some of the widows and orphans became such because husbands and fathers died fighting. He also notes that the sole defense witness, a former IRS employee, testified that the program's focus would not have changed his opinion of Care's entitlement to tax exemption because widows and orphans are traditional objects of charitable aid. It's not significant for tax purposes how they became widows and orphans. The defense testimony was directly contradicted, however, by Robert Charnoff, the IRS employee who actually reviewed Care's application. Charnoff testified that he almost certainly would have denied Care's initial application for tax exemption if Care had disclosed that its orphan sponsorship program targeted children of martyred mujahideen because it's telling would-be fighters in foreign conflicts that if something happens to them, if they're killed say, this organization will provide funds to their orphans. So the net effect is it's an inducement for them to go to these areas of conflict. Likewise, Dawn Goldberg testified that evidence indicating that Care was soliciting people to go out and fight, or soliciting money to help fighters, could have led to the revocation of Care's tax exemption because one of the basic things [a 501(c)(3) charity] can't do is they can't do anything that's illegal or violate[s] public policy. The materiality to the IRS of the undisclosed focus of Care's orphan sponsorship program demonstrates why the simple listing of an orphan sponsorship program on the Form 1023 and prior Form 990s was not an adequate disclosure of the activity that was in fact being carried out by Care. To employ a counterfactual, if Care had initially conducted the unfocused orphan sponsorship program described in the Form 1023, but later elected to focus its donations on the orphans of martyrs, the testimony by Charnoff and Goldberg makes clear that the change in the program's focus should have been disclosed in response to Question 76 as a substantial modification. On the same basis, it would have been reasonable for the jury to have concluded that Care's Form 1023 described an orphan sponsorship activity that Care had never conducted, and hence Mubayyid was required to report Care's actual orphan sponsorship program in response to Question 76 as an ongoing activity that had never been accurately disclosed. The 990s themselves, though incomplete in the way we have described, provide evidence that the orphan sponsorship program was ongoing during each of the tax years in question. In addition, a government witness who volunteered for Care in 1996 and 1997 acknowledged that Care was actively raising money for orphan sponsorship during those years, and authenticated a flyer soliciting donations for orphans in language substantially similar to that contained on the website. In 2000 and 2001, as described above, the website featured the program in a way that made clear its true purpose. Although there was no direct testimony or record evidence confirming the program's operation in 1999, the other evidence permits the reasonable inference that it was an ongoing activity. We thus conclude that the government presented sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could have found that, in response to Question 76 on Care's Form 990s, Mubayyid willfully failed to disclose at least one reportable activity that occurred in each of the 1997, 1999, and 2000 tax years. Any arguable ambiguity in the temporal scope of Question 76 could not, therefore, have precluded Mubayyid's conviction for making a false statement; Mubayyid's answers would have been false even under the interpretation of the question consistent with his claimed understanding. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm Mubayyid's convictions on Counts 3, 4, and 5, for filing false tax returns in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1), and his conviction on Count 8, for corruptly endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue laws in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7212(a).
Mubayyid claims that Count 1 of the indictment, which charged him with a scheme to conceal material information from a federal agency, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(1), was not supported by sufficient evidence. The crime under § 1001(a)(1) is the concealment of a material fact by scheme, trick, or device. [36] The charge in the indictment, which covered all three defendants, alleged that the defendants concealed material facts . . . to wit: the Defendants concealed the fact that Care International, Inc., was an outgrowth of and successor to the Al-Kifah Refugee Center and was engaged in non-charitable activities involving the solicitation and expenditure of funds to support and promote mujahideen and jihad. Mubayyid emphasizes that the language of the indictment following to wit stated that the defendants concealed the fact that before proceeding to describe two facts. Then, with echoes of his challenge to the Count 2 conspiracy, he asserts that the government necessarily charged each defendant with a single-object scheme that embraced both facts as if one. He notes that the government presented insufficient evidence at trial to demonstrate that his scheme encompassed one of those facts for the simple reason that the Form 990 does not request any information regarding whether the organization filing the return is the outgrowth or successor of another organization. As he did with the conspiracy charge, Mubayyid thus contends that his conviction must be vacated because the government failed to prove the specific scheme charged. The government was not required to prove that Mubayyid schemed to conceal that Care was an outgrowth of, or successor to, Al-Kifah. It is well established that an indictment may charge alternative theories of guilt in the conjunctive, and that, [w]hen a jury returns a guilty verdict on an indictment charging several acts in the conjunctive, the verdict stands if the evidence is sufficient with respect to any one of the acts charged. United States v. Murray, 621 F.2d 1163, 1171 n. 10 (1st Cir.1980); see also Turner v. United States, 396 U.S. 398, 420, 90 S.Ct. 642, 24 L.Ed.2d 610 (1970). Moreover, indictments are to be read in a plain and commonsense manner. United States v. Flemmi, 245 F.3d 24, 29 (1st Cir.2001). The indictment charged Mubayyid with concealing two facts by scheme, trick, or device. Under our settled precedent, proof that he concealed either fact is sufficient to support his conviction. Mubayyid attempts to extend the defendants' constructive amendment argument from the conspiracy charge in Count 2 to the charge in Count 1; the argument is as unconvincing here as it was there. Cf. Dowdell, 595 F.3d at 68; Garcia-Paz, 282 F.3d at 1212 (holding that language preceded by the phrase to wit in the indictment is mere surplusage that may be disregarded and needs not be proven). As a second line of attack, Mubayyid contends that his false statements on the Form 990s are legally insufficient to support his conviction under § 1001(a)(1) because they were not affirmative acts of concealment in the face of a legal duty to disclose. [37] As just described, § 1001(a)(1) criminalizes the concealment of material facts from a government agency by scheme, trick, or device. A separate provision of the statute, under which Mubayyid was not charged, criminalizes the making of materially false or fraudulent statements. 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2). Reflecting this statutory separation, we have held that simple omissions fall short of constituting affirmative acts of concealment, which are required to prove a scheme, trick, or device. United States v. St. Michael's Credit Union, 880 F.2d 579, 589 (1st Cir.1989). Additionally, under § 1001(a)(1), the concealment must occur in the face of a legal duty to disclose the material fact. See generally United States v. Anzalone, 766 F.2d 676, 682-83 (1st Cir.1985). Mubayyid fails to acknowledge that one has a legal duty to disclose information when a response is required by statute, government regulation, or government form. See, e.g., United States v. Calhoon, 97 F.3d 518, 526 (11th Cir.1996); United States v. Kingston, 971 F.2d 481, 489 (10th Cir.1992); United States v. Bucey, 876 F.2d 1297, 1307 (7th Cir.1989). Moreover, by filing the false Form 990s, which he signed under penalty of perjury, Mubayyid did not passively fail to disclose material facts; he engaged in an affirmative act of concealment. Cf. St. Michael's Credit Union, 880 F.2d at 590-91. His conduct is therefore sufficient grounds for a conviction under § 1001(a)(1). Lastly, Mubayyid contends that, if the government did not charge Count 1 as a unitary scheme, his conviction needs to be set aside under the rationale of Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298, 77 S.Ct. 1064, 1 L.Ed.2d 1356 (1957). See generally United States v. Nieves-Burgos, 62 F.3d 431, 434-37 (1st Cir.1995) (explaining Yates ). Yates stands for the principle that a conviction must be vacated where the charged crime was submitted to the jury on two independent theories of guilt, one of which depends upon conduct that falls outside of the relevant limitations period, and where  it is impossible to tell which ground the jury selected.  See id. at 312, 77 S.Ct. 1064 (emphasis added). Yates is inapplicable to Mubayyid's conviction under § 1001(a)(1) because it is not impossible to tell whether the jury rested their verdict upon evidence of time-barred conduct. Cf. United States v. Zvi, 168 F.3d 49, 55 (2d Cir.1999); United States v. Hudgins, 120 F.3d 483, 487 (4th Cir.1997) (describing Yates's impossible to tell requirement as integral to the rule's application). The indictment charged all three defendants with scheming to conceal two facts: that Care was a successor to Al-Kifah, and that Care was engaged in non-charitable activities that included supporting the mujahideen and jihad. In separate counts, the jury convicted Mubayyid of filing false tax returns within the five-year limitations period by failing to disclose that Care was involved in non-charitable activities that involved supporting the mujahideen and jihad. As noted above, the filing of false tax returns is an affirmative act of concealment sufficient to support a conviction for scheming to conceal material facts under § 1001(a)(1). By contrast, there was no evidence at trial that Mubayyid engaged in any effort to conceal the fact that Care was a successor to Al-Kifah (the conduct which Mubayyid now claims would have occurred outside of the limitations period, if it had been proven). Thus, far from being impossible to tell whether the jury based its verdict on a theory of guilt that depends on time-barred conduct, it is obvious that Mubayyid's conviction under § 1001(a)(1) rests exclusively on his false Form 990 filings within the limitations period. The argument fails.
Mubayyid also challenges the admissibility of a recorded telephone conversation between himself and the executive director of GRF, Mohammed Chehade, in which he declined the advice to remove Care's documents from a storage unit in response to the FBI's investigation of Care. In the telephone call, Mubayyid informs Chehade that the FBI had attempted to search Care's former offices. The relevant portion of the call was as follows: Chehade: What did you have? Did you have things? Mubayyid: Actually, we had already moved, we were not there. . . . We had moved our effects to uh-wha do you call it? To storage. . . . Chehade: Alright. What do you have? Storage? What-what do you have for storage? Take the things out of storage. Mubayyid: They were originally locked, in- in- in-, uh, in- the ugh- the office, and we moved them to the storage. . . . Chehade: Remove them. Mubayyid: It need uh, one is afraid that they may think that there is something, I mean Chehade: No. Mubayyid: I don't want to touch anything so that there is no. Chehade: No, no, no, remove them, remove them. The government introduced the conversation to show that, notwithstanding his statement to the contrary at the time, Mubayyid ultimately removed and destroyed documents from the storage unit, evidencing his consciousness of guilt. To that end, the government tied this conversation to evidence indicating that three particularly damning documents, one of which involved GRF, had been removed from the storage unit between the time of the FBI's covert search in October 2001 and the time of the FBI's subsequent search in April 2003. It also explained this theory of the evidence to the jury in closing argument. Appropriately, the district court instructed the jury that it could not consider Chehade's statements for the truth of the matter asserted, and that the conversation was being offered to show the impact upon Mubayyid. The evidence was admissible for this limited purpose. Cf. United States v. Walter, 434 F.3d 30, 34 (1st Cir.2006) (concluding that informer's out-of-court statements during taped sting were admissible as context for defendant's taped responsive admissions). In any event, the admission of this phone conversation was harmless. [A] non-constitutional evidentiary issue will be treated as harmless if it is highly probable that the error did not contribute to the verdict. United States v. Rose, 104 F.3d 1408, 1414 (1st Cir.1997). At trial, the government introduced evidence that the storage unit was rented by Mubayyid and remained under his control during the time between the two FBI searches. It further showed that many of Care's documents were retrieved from Mubayyid's residence during the 2003 search, that the documents in question were not recovered from either the storage unit or the residence, and that the storage unit contained a paper shredder in 2003 that had not been present in 2001. Thus, the government had substantial other evidence from which it could have asked the jury to draw the same conclusion. Moreover, by choosing to demonstrate consciousness of guilt as it didi.e., by emphasizing that Mubayyid had been asked to remove documentsthe government necessarily highlighted for the jury that Mubayyid, in fact, refused to do so. For these reasons, it is highly probable that the introduction of the challenged phone conversation and the prosecutor's reference to it in closing argument did not contribute to the verdict.