Opinion ID: 3171512
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: BBC Equities’ Financial Condition

Text: On the thirty-first day of trial, the court disallowed additional testimony as to ongoing, but ultimately failed, financial negotiations through which Bravata hoped to inject $1.2 billion into his companies in the summer of 2009. Quoting our decision in United States v. Daniel, 329 F.3d 480, 488 (6th Cir. 2003), the court remarked that “[a] good faith belief that the victim will be repaid and will sustain no loss is no defense at all.” Testimony as - 18 - Case Nos. 13-2380, 13-2381, 13-2591, 15-1370, United States v. Bravata to incoming funds therefore would confuse the issues and distract the jury from assessing whether Bravata defrauded investors when he obtained money from them. The court excluded the incoming-funds evidence. Bravata attempts to distinguish Daniel on appeal. Whereas Daniel made material misrepresentations intending “the victim to accept a substantial risk that otherwise would not have been taken,” Daniel, 329 F.3d at 488, Bravata’s investors never “testified that if they [had] known different[ly], they would not [have] invested.” Because Bravata’s misrepresentations never induced a victim to invest who otherwise would have abstained, he urges us to find Daniel inapplicable to his case. The record clearly contradicts this assertion. (See, e.g., R. 199, DeFauw Test., Day 3 Trial Tr. at 65–67 (investing in BBC Equities after attending seminar and meeting privately with Bravata).) The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the incoming-funds evidence under Daniel.