Opinion ID: 3064963
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The 2004 Completed Transaction

Text: [2] Mincoff and Munoz agreed that Mincoff would take the cocaine to his source and return with the money. This type of arrangement is known as “fronting.” “Fronting is a sales technique in which some or all of the drugs being sold are provided before payment is required.” United States v. RamirezRobles 386 F.3d 1234, 1242 n.2 (9th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). [3] Although we have not specifically commented on the relationship between fronting and conspiracy, other circuits have credited evidence of fronting to establish a distribution conspiracy. In United States v. Pruett, 501 F.3d 976, 985-86 (8th Cir. 2007), vacated on other grounds, 128 S. Ct. 1473 (2008), the Eighth Circuit concluded that a reasonable jury could have found Pruett to be a knowing member of a con9992 UNITED STATES v. MINCOFF spiracy to distribute methamphetamine when he both purchased and sold the drug, and fronted one-half ounce of it on at least one occasion. Similarly, the evidence in United States v. Beasley, 2 F.3d 1551, 1560-61 (11th Cir. 1993), as amended, cert. denied, 512 U.S. 1240 (1994), was sufficient to sustain the defendant’s conspiracy conviction where the defendant’s supplier testified that the defendant purchased crack cocaine from him on several occasions and that the supplier sometimes fronted cocaine to the defendant.