Opinion ID: 3053417
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: fraud, or any scheme or attempt to

Text: defraud, by or against a foreign bank (as 5 In 1996, Congress amended this clause to add “or destruction of property by means of explosive or fire.” See 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7)(B)(ii). UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13829 defined in paragraph 7 of section 1(b) of the International Banking Act of 1978). 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7) (1992). In 2001, Congress amended this section to include “bribery of a public official, or the misappropriation, theft, or embezzlement of public funds by or for the benefit of a public official” as a “specified unlawful activity.” 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7)(B)(iv). Extortion, as it is criminalized under the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, can be committed through the threat of violence or under color of official right. See Evans v. United States, 504 U.S. 255, 261-62 (1992). Lazarenko urges that “extortion” as it is used in § 1956 does not include nonviolent foreign extortion. He claims that such conduct is equivalent to foreign bribery and public corruption and that these offenses were beyond the reach of federal law until the Patriot Act of 2001.6 [13] “It is a familiar ‘maxim that a statutory term is generally presumed to have its common law meaning.’ ” Evans, 504 U.S. at 259 (quoting Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 592 (1990)). At common law, extortion was a crime that resembled what we know as bribery, and involved an abuse of power by a public official. Id. at 260. Federal statutes have expanded that definition to include the obtaining of property by force. Id. at 261. [14] We presume that Congress was aware of the common law meaning of extortion when it enacted § 1956. As the Supreme Court has explained, [W]here Congress borrows terms of art in which are 6 The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act punished those who offered bribes to foreign officials, but did not reach the foreign officials who received the bribes. 15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1, 78dd-2; United States v. Castle, 925 F.2d 831, 833-34 (5th Cir. 1991). 13830 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO accumulated the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such case, absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, not as a departure from them. Evans, 504 U.S. at 259-60 (quoting Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263 (1952)). Significantly, Congress did not qualify the term in any way that suggests that we should read “extortion” as excluding the common law definition. The fact that “extortion” is listed with “kidnapping” and “robbery” does not compel us to give the term a narrower meaning or one predicated on force or violence. The 2001 amendment to § 1956 does not become superfluous if we read “extortion” to include extortion under color of official right. Bribery and extortion under color of official right are not co-extensive. “Bribery of a public official” extends to the individual who offers the bribe as well as to the public official who accepts the bribe.7 “Misappropriation, theft, or embezzlement of public funds by or for the benefit of a public official” will also capture conduct not punishable as “extortion under color of official right” because misappropriation, theft, and embezzlement do not necessarily require the quid pro quo of an official action. See Evans, 504 U.S. at 258-59. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Santos, 128 S.Ct. 2020 (2008), does not change our analysis 7 The federal bribery statute punishes both one who “corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official” and public officials who “corruptly demand[ ], seek[ ], receive[ ], accept[ ] or agree[ ] to receive or accept anything of value.” 18 U.S.C. §§ 201(b)(1), (2). UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13831 of the statute. In Santos, the Supreme Court examined the word “proceeds” as it was used in § 1956. See id. at 2023-26. The Court concluded that the term, left undefined in the statute, was ambiguous as to whether it meant “profits” or “receipts,” and so defined it in the more defendant-friendly terms of “profits,” based on the rule of lenity. Id. at 2025. Critical to the issue here, the Court began its analysis by reaffirming the principle that “[w]hen a term is undefined, we give it its ordinary meaning.” Id. at 2024. This principle both starts and ends our analysis. The term “extortion” has an ordinary meaning and it is not ambiguous. Unlike the word “proceeds,” “extortion” has a common law meaning and federal statutes use the term to mean both extortion by violence and extortion under color of official right. See, e.g., Evans, 504 U.S. at 261; James v. United States, 127 S.Ct. 1586, 1604-05 (2007) (Scalia, J. dissenting) (citing the Travel Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1952, the Hobbs Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1951, RICO, 18 U.S.C. § 1961, and the Model Penal Code § 223.4 as examples of statutes with a broad interpretation of “extortion”). Lazarenko has not directed us to any statute where Congress used the word “extortion” and meant only extortion by violence or only extortion under color of official right. Cf. Santos, 128 S.Ct. at 2024 (observing that Congress “sometimes has defined [proceeds] to mean ‘receipts’ and sometimes ‘profits.’ ”). The ambiguity that the Court wrestled with in Santos is simply absent with respect to “extortion.” Lazarenko’s money laundering convictions on counts 1 through 8 are also supported by the predicate offenses of wire fraud and interstate transportation of stolen property. See 18 U.S.C. § 1956(c)(7)(A). Neither wire fraud nor interstate transportation of stolen property needs to be listed under “offenses against a foreign nation” for Lazarenko’s convictions to be affirmed. Lazarenko was charged with violating the law of the United States by using a wire within this country in furtherance of his fraud or to transport funds that are derived 13832 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO from fraud. That the underlying conduct occurred elsewhere does not convert wire fraud or interstate transportation of stolen property into an offense against a foreign nation. E. INTERSTATE TRANSPORTATION OF STOLEN PROPERTY— COUNT 31 Lazarenko also challenges the sufficiency of the evidence for his conviction on count 31 for interstate transportation of stolen property. Count 31 alleges a transfer of $1.8 million from Lazarenko’s LIP Handel account in Switzerland to Kiritchenko’s ABS Trading account at Bank of America in California. As noted earlier, this charge requires a tracing of the fraud proceeds, not simply a commingled account. What is totally missing here is evidence from the key account at the Hungarian PostaBank, from which the money was transferred into the LIP Handel account. According to the testimony of the former director of Nikopolsky, Boris Velychko, in 1992, Lazarenko’s deputy negotiated for Nikopolsky to loan $2.4 million to a Dutch company, Van der Ploeg, on behalf of Naukovy to purchase wheat. The $2.4 million was transferred to Van der Ploeg’s account at ABN Amro Bank in the Netherlands in December 1992. The loan to Naukovy was repaid in local currency, which, according to Velychko, was devalued in 1993. On January 19, 1993, $1.2 million was transferred from the ABN Amro account to Agrafonov’s account at PostaBank in Hungary. In June 1993, $1.205 million was transferred from the PostaBank account to Lazarenko’s LIP Handel account in Switzerland. In July 1994, $1.8 million was transferred from the LIP Handel account to Kiritchenko’s ABS Trading account at Bank of America in San Francisco. It is this final transfer that is charged as the interstate transportation of stolen property in count 31. [15] Anyone who “transports, transmits, or transfers in interstate or foreign commerce any goods, wares, merchanUNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13833 dise, securities or money, of the value of $5,000 or more, knowing the same to have been stolen, converted or taken by fraud” is guilty of interstate transportation of stolen property. 18 U.S.C. § 2314. We will uphold the conviction if, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, there is sufficient evidence for a rational juror to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson, 443 U.S. at 324. [16] The ledger from Van der Ploeg’s account at ABN Amro shows a transfer of $1.2 million to an account at PostaBank, and the ledger for Lazarenko’s LIP Handel at Union Bank of Switzerland shows a receipt of $1.205 million from PostaBank, but the glaring gap is that there are no records from PostaBank at all. The government was unable to produce any documents from PostaBank itself. Lazarenko asserts that this gap is fatal to the government’s charge of interstate transportation of stolen property because without those records it is impossible to know whether the $1.205 million that was transferred to LIP Handel was the proceeds of fraud or derived from the proceeds of fraud. We agree. The district court instructed the jury that to find Lazarenko guilty of interstate transportation of stolen property, the funds that were transferred must be the proceeds of fraud or derived from the proceeds of fraud. This rule has its roots in United States v. Poole, 557 F.2d 531 (5th Cir. 1977). There, the defendant, Poole, deposited a check that contained fraudulently-obtained funds into his bank account and then, on the same day, wrote a check on that account for an amount identical to the amount that had been deposited. Id. at 533-34. He deposited that check into an out-of-state bank. Id. The Fifth Circuit reversed the conviction because the bank account into which Poole deposited the fraudulently-obtained funds had sufficient clean funds to cover the amount of the check that was transported across state lines. Id. The government relies on the Seventh Circuit’s ruling in United States v. Quintanilla, 2 F.3d 1469 (7th Cir. 1993), to 13834 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO argue that it does not matter whether there were sufficient clean funds in the PostaBank account to cover the transfer of $1.205 million to the LIP Handel account. In Quintanilla, the defendants were found guilty of defrauding the G. Heileman Brewing Company’s corporate sponsorship program and convicted of, among other charges, interstate transportation of stolen property. Id. at 1471. Defendant Monreal, the director of the program, devised a scheme to receive kickbacks from organizations who received sponsorship awards. Id. The money passed from Heileman to the organization and the organization would, in turn, pass a portion to Monreal. Id. Quintanilla was the director of one of the organizations, Operation Search, that had kicked money back to Monreal. Id. Quintanilla argued on appeal that Operation Search had sufficient clean funds in its account each time a kickback check was drawn and transported to Monreal. Id. at 1478. The Seventh Circuit rejected this argument. It explained that, [t]he evidence at trial showed, and Quintanilla does not dispute, that he agreed to pay Monreal a portion of every Heileman grant that Operation Search received. Accordingly, the ultimate source of the funds used to pay Monreal was Heileman. The evi- dence also showed that Quintanilla followed Mon- real’s directions concerning exactly how the kickbacks were to be made; there is no suggestion that these directions were not followed to the last detail. Given the nexus between the Heileman grants and the kickbacks made to Monreal, we do no[t] think § 2314 liability hinges in this case on whether or not Operation Search had sufficient clean funds in its bank account each time a kickback check was drawn and transported across state lines to Monreal. Id. at 1478-79 (footnote omitted). The court looked at the purpose behind § 2314, and noted specifically that the statute was meant to prevent those who were attempting to “ ‘utilize the channels of interstate commerce make a successful get UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13835 away.’ ” Id. at 1479 (quoting United States v. Sheridan, 329 U.S. 379, 384 (1946)). It concluded that “[l]ooking to the substance of Quintanilla’s conduct, it is apparent that the checks he caused to be transported in interstate commerce represented, and were directly derived from, fraudulently obtained Heileman funds.” Id. Quintanilla does not save the government in this case because the evidence of the nexus between the grants and the kickbacks in that case was sufficient. Here, the chain of alleged kickbacks from the wheat deal is missing a few links. More significantly, though, the jury here was instructed in accordance with Poole and the government did not object to the premises underlying that decision. In any event, even if we infer that Lazarenko was connected to the wheat deal because it was negotiated by his deputy and he received a payment that represented approximately fifty percent of the proceeds, PostaBank records are still required for there to be sufficient evidence that Lazarenko’s subsequent transfer of $1.8 million to Kiritchenko constituted interstate transportation of stolen property. The government’s argument that the transfer of $1.205 million to Lazarenko’s LIP Handel account was the proceeds of fraud because the fraud was not complete until the money reached Lazarenko does not persuade us that the PostaBank records are unnecessary. For the $1.8 million transferred from Lazarenko’s LIP Handel account to Kiritchenko’s ABS Trading account to be fraudulently-obtained property, it must have contained at least $5,000 of the $2.4 million transferred to Van der Ploeg in the phony wheat deal. We cannot look only at whether the $1.8 million contained at least $5,000 of the $1.205 million transferred into Lazarenko’s LIP Handel account as the government urges because the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the government shows only that the $1.205 million payment was an extortion payment, i.e., fifty percent of 13836 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO the proceeds from the phony wheat transaction.8 The fraud was Lazarenko’s deputy arranging for Nikopol to give Van der Ploeg $2.4 million to buy wheat that was never purchased. That fraud was completed when the money was transferred to Van der Ploeg. [17] The record supports an inference that Lazarenko extorted $1.205 million from Agrafonov, because Lazarenko always extorted half of the profits from businesses. But making an extortion payment and completing a fraud are entirely different propositions. The $1.205 million extortion payment also may have been money derived from the phony wheat deal. Without the records from PostaBank, which would show whether there were clean funds in the account from which Agafonov could make the required payment to Lazarenko, this inference is speculation. In short, the evidence reflects money into the Hungarian account and money out of the account, but missing is evidence about the account itself and whether the transferred money was “directly traceable” to the fraud itself. See Morgan, 805 F.2d at 1378. Accordingly, we reverse Lazarenko’s conviction on count 31.9 F. RETROACTIVE MISJOINDER Lazarenko also appeals the denial of his Rule 33 motion for a new trial. He argues that the government indicted him on the UESU charges, knowing that the charges could not be proven, and then, after the directed verdict of acquittal, used the evidence from the alleged UESU scheme against him in its closing argument, in violation of the doctrine of retroactive misjoinder.10 He asserts that he was denied the opportunity to 8 Kiritchenko testified that Lazarenko worked with everyone 50-50. We give the government the benefit of the inference that Lazarenko worked with Agafonov 50-50 as well.” 9 Because we reverse Lazarenko’s conviction on this count, we do not need to reach his argument that the government’s closing argument was misleading. 10 This doctrine is closely related to prejudicial spillover. The concepts and terms are often used interchangeably. See United States v. Vebeliunas, 76 F.3d 1283, 1293-94 (2d Cir. 1996). UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13837 respond in his own closing argument to the government’s misleading statements. We review for an abuse of discretion the district court’s denial of a motion for a new trial made on the grounds of retroactive misjoinder. United States v. Aldrich, 169 F.3d 526, 528 (8th Cir. 1999). Although we consider de novo whether a defendant has been deprived of his constitutional right to present closing argument, see United States v. Igbinosun, 528 F.3d 387, 391 (5th Cir. 2008), a district court’s limitation on a closing argument is reviewed for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Spillone, 879 F.2d 514, 518 (9th Cir. 1989). [18] The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allow for several offenses and several defendants to be joined in a single indictment. If, however, some of the offenses or defendants are dismissed mid-trial, in some cases the trial court must sever the proceedings in order to protect the defendant from prejudice. See Schaffer v. United States, 362 U.S. 511, 514 (1960). [19] As the Second Circuit explained in Vebeliunas, “ ‘Retroactive misjoinder’ arises where joinder of multiple counts was proper initially, but later developments—such as a district court’s dismissal of some counts for lack of evidence or an appellate court’s reversal of less than all convictions—render the initial joinder improper. In this Circuit, ‘[t]o invoke retroactive misjoinder,’ a defendant ‘must show compelling prejudice.’ Prejudicial spillover from evidence used to obtain a conviction subse- quently reversed on appeal may constitute compelling prejudice.” Vebeliunas, 76 F.3d at 1293-94 (internal citations omitted) (quoting United States v. Jones, 16 F.3d 487, 493 (2d Cir. 1994)). The First Circuit has set a high bar for proving preju13838 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO dicial spillover: “[A] claim of prejudicial spillover cannot succeed unless ‘a defendant . . . prove[s] prejudice so pervasive that a miscarriage of justice looms.’ ” United States v. Trainor, 477 F.3d 24, 36 (1st Cir. 2007) (quoting United States v. Levy-Cordero, 67 F.3d 1002, 1008 (1st Cir. 1995)). We have examined the issue of prejudicial spillover in the context of a defendant’s motion to sever his trial from a codefendant. In United States v. Cuozzo, 962 F.2d 945 (9th Cir. 1992), we stated that, “[i]n assessing the prejudice to a defendant from the ‘spillover’ of incriminating evidence, the primary consideration is whether ‘the jury can reasonably be expected to compartmentalize the evidence as it relates to separate defendants, in view of its volume and the limited admissibility of some of the evidence.’ ” Id. at 950 (quoting United States v. Escalante, 637 F.2d 1197, 1201 (9th Cir. 1980)). The trial court’s instructions to the jury are a “critical factor” in this assessment. Cuozzo, 962 F.2d at 950. Also, “[t]he fact that the jury rendered selective verdicts is highly indicative of its ability to compartmentalize the evidence.” Id. [20] At the outset, we reject the government’s contention that we have limited the doctrine of retroactive misjoinder only to cases where there is more than one defendant. The government reads United States v. Anguiano, 873 F.2d 1314 (9th Cir. 1989), too broadly. In Anguiano, we held that the trial court did not err in refusing to give a multiple conspiracies instruction where there was a single defendant. Id. at 1318. We stated that, [a] multiple conspiracies instruction is generally required where the indictment charges several defendants with one overall conspiracy, but the proof at trial indicates that a jury could reasonably conclude that some of the defendants were only involved in separate conspiracies unrelated to the overall conspiracy charged in the indictment. The instruction is required because, in such a situation, there is a possiUNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13839 bility of prejudicial variance between the indictment and the trial proof. The variance may be prejudicial in a number of ways, but the problem that is of con- cern here is the possibility of transference or “spillover” of guilt. In this type of situation, one of the defendants argues that he or she was only involved, if at all, in a minor conspiracy that is unrelated to the overall conspiracy charged in the indictment, and that a multiple conspiracies instruction is required in order to ensure that there is no “spillover” of guilt from one defendant to another. However, there is no problem of spillover when, as in this case, the defendant stands trial alone. Accordingly, Anguiano was not entitled to a multiple conspiracies instruction on this basis. Id. at 1317-18 (internal citations and footnotes omitted). We did not hold broadly that the doctrine of prejudicial spillover is inapplicable where there is only one defendant. [21] The government’s citation to the Seventh Circuit’s decision in United States v. Holzer, 840 F.2d 1343 (7th Cir. 1988), as limiting the applicability of the doctrine of prejudicial spillover or retroactive misjoinder, also misses the mark. The Seventh Circuit stated that “[n]o rule of evidence is violated by the admission of evidence concerning a crime of which the defendant is acquitted, provided the crime was properly joined to the crime for which he was convicted and the crimes did not have to be severed for purposes of trial.” Id. at 1349 (emphasis added). The Seventh Circuit thus is consistent with our sister circuits in recognizing that there are circumstances where charges in a trial must be severed to avoid prejudice. See, e.g., Vebeliunas, 76 F.3d at 1293-94; Aldrich, 169 F.3d at 528. We thus clarify that the doctrine of prejudicial spillover or retroactive misjoinder may apply to a case where there is only one defendant. [22] Invoking the three-factor test that the Second Circuit developed in Vebeliunas, the district court concluded that 13840 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO Lazarenko was not prejudiced by the now-dismissed charges. Under the Vebeliunas test, the court considers: (1) whether the evidence was so inflammatory that it would tend to cause the jury to convict on the remaining counts; (2) the degree of overlap and similarity between the dismissed and remaining counts; and (3) a general assessment of the strength of the government’s case on the remaining counts. Vebeliunas, 76 F.3d at 1294. These factors reasonably address concerns about prejudicial spillover. We adopt these factors and add to them the factors we identified in Cuozzo—whether the trial court diligently instructed the jury and whether there is evidence, such as the jury’s rendering of selective verdicts, to indicate that the jury compartmentalized the evidence. Cuozzo, 962 F.2d at 950. [23] The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Lazarenko a new trial based on prejudicial misjoinder. The court first found that the evidence presented in connection with the UESU and GHP frauds was not inflammatory. It was not persuaded that the jury “threw up their hands” over the $200 million associated with the dismissed counts because the jury deliberated for four days and sent questions to the court. Certainly, the UESU scheme was a significant component of the government’s case against Lazarenko. But the evidence of fraud, illegal transfers and coverups was so extensive that evidence of $200 million in allegedly unlawful transfers is hardly more inflammatory than evidence of the other transfers or the evidence that Lazarenko extorted fifty percent of the profits from all the businesses he was involved with. The testimony on the $200 million transfer did not amount to compelling prejudice. The government does not challenge the district court’s ruling that some of the evidence would have been inadmissible if the dismissed counts had been dismissed before trial. See United States v. Hamilton, 334 F.3d 170, 182 (2d Cir. 2003) (“[P]rejudicial spillover is unlikely if the dismissed count and UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13841 the remaining counts were either quite similar or quite dissimilar.”). [24] Finally, the district court concluded that the government’s case on the remaining counts was sufficiently strong. The court sent 29 counts to the jury, but overturned the verdict on 15 counts. We have reversed an additional six counts. This issue presents a closer question, but “[i]t is not necessary that the court agree with jury verdicts on all counts to determine that the jury carefully weighed the evidence.” United States v. Stefan, 784 F.2d 1093, 1101 (11th Cir. 1986). Lazarenko has not explained how the evidence related to the dismissed counts was tainted by the UESU evidence. The overall evidence of fraud was strong, although it was incumbent on the government to weave that evidence through the technical threads of multiple counts. That the government was not 100% successful does not undermine the evidence that was airtight. Lazarenko further argues that the prejudicial impact of the evidence on the dismissed counts was compounded in the government’s closing argument. He claims that while the government referred to the scheme in the “indictment,” he was prevented from arguing that the single conspiracy alleged in count 1 was not proven because the central allegations— the UESU fraud, the GHP/PMH fraud, and the Dityakovsky extortion— were not proven. He further asserts that the government improperly referred to the UESU fraud in arguing that Lazarenko was “never engaged in legitimate business,” while he was precluded from responding that the funds from UESU were not unlawful. The jury did not see the indictment and was not informed of the specific allegations in the indictment related to UESU. The district court gave counsel three guidelines for their closing arguments: (1) counsel could not “implicate the Court and its ruling on the dismissed counts in your argument”; (2) counsel could not “comment on why the theories were no lon13842 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO ger before” the jury; and (3) counsel could not “mislead them by way of argument . . . that they can acquit based on the absence” of the UESU counts. [25] The government’s references to the indictment were not improper. The jury was specifically instructed that certain counts were no longer before them, the government stated at the beginning of its closing argument that it was not addressing those counts, and the jury never saw the indictment. With these safeguards in place, the government’s mention of “the crimes charged in the indictment,” or the schemes “alleged in the indictment,” — references that did not mention UESU — did not improperly implicate the dismissed UESU counts. Lazarenko appears to want it both ways. He argues that he was prevented from countering the government’s references to the indictment and that he should have been able to argue that the government failed to prove the single conspiracy and wire fraud allegations that it promised to prove because the evidence did not support the UESU, GHP, PMH, and Dityakovsy allegations. In his closing argument, Lazarenko’s counsel argued, [I]s that plan or scheme that the government is now presenting to you, is that the same plan or scheme that Mr. Lazarenko was charged with, that the gov- ernment has been prosecuting in this case? Is what the government’s presented to you in final argument the same scheme that they argued to you the whole case? Remember, the government argued to you that UESU, UEIL, Itera, prefab houses, Nakosta were all part of the scheme. Now the government argues, the scheme was Naukovy and Kiritchenko alone. That’s the scheme. UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13843 We will talk more about this, but the defendant has a constitutional right to be tried on only what he has been charged with, and a constitutional right not to be convicted— The court then sustained “its own objection to that part of the argument.” Outside the presence of the jury, the court explained its view. The court commented that Lazarenko’s counsel had “very deftly for the most part . . . complied” with the guidelines. The court stated, though, that counsel crossed the line when he argued that “the defendant has a right under the Constitution . . . to be convicted on the . . . indictment [returned by the grand jury].” The court stated that “[t]here is nothing in our record that tells them about the grand jury, their function or what they do. . . . I did not want to mislead this jury and have them now consider what the grand jury did or didn’t do.” The court’s objection was limited to counsel’s references to what had or had not been charged. Lazarenko’s counsel was not precluded from arguing that the government did not prove the scheme they initially laid out based on the evidence. At that point, the indictment was not in play. It was not improper for the court to limit the closing argument to the evidence. We also disagree with Lazarenko’s assertion that the government improperly relied on the UESU scheme when it argued that Lazarenko had “never engaged in legitimate business.” The government argued to the jury that, the evidence in this case shows that throughout this period of time the only position the defendant held was an official position. The only thing he did was exercise his official authority. He was never engaged in any legitimate business. He never received, legitimately, any income from Kiritchenko or from Naukovy State Farms. 13844 UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO The UESU allegations are not implicated in this argument. Not only did the government at the beginning of its argument state that it would not be referring to the UESU counts, the government followed up its statement that Lazarenko did not have any legitimate business by linking that reference to the claim that the income from Kiritchenko and Naukovy was illegal. [26] At most, the government indirectly suggested that the UESU business was illegitimate. Lazarenko responded by arguing that “the suggestion that money from UESU or Itera or UEIL and Nakosta had an unlawful source is now no longer before you. Those sources are not unlawful.” The government did not make a contemporaneous objection, but argued to the court during a break that this statement was inappropriate. The court ruled that counsel could argue using the terms of the jury instructions that certain evidence was “not before” the jury, and stated that “there is more than enough in this record to argue the schemes are not proven based on the weight of the record itself, and that’s where the argument ought to be.” This ruling did not prevent Lazarenko from dispelling any impression, however faint, that may have been left with the jury that all of Lazarenko’s wealth was obtained illegally. Understandably, the district court required that the argument, however, would have to be based on the evidence. The counts we have dismissed fall of their own weight and those we have affirmed stand on their own. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for a new trial based on retroactive misjoinder, nor did the court improperly limit Lazarenko’s closing argument. We affirm Lazarenko’s convictions on count 1 for conspiracy, counts 2 through 5 for money laundering, and counts 6 through 8 for money laundering. We reverse Lazarenko’s convictions on counts 25 through 29 for wire fraud, and count 31 for interstate transportation of stolen property. Because we reverse on six of the fourteen counts of which Lazarenko was UNITED STATES v. LAZARENKO 13845 convicted, we vacate the sentence and remand for resentencing on the remaining eight counts as to which we affirm the conviction. AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED.