Opinion ID: 4376014
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: Darren Michael Gonzales owned and operated Concrete Specialists, Inc. in Cheyenne, Wyoming. As a side business, he sold cocaine and methamphetamine. Gonzales used his personal and business bank accounts to launder the proceeds of his drug sales. After extensive investigations by state and federal law enforcement, a federal grand jury charged Gonzales with committing a multitude of drug and financial crimes. He eventually agreed to plead guilty to ten of the fifty-four counts set out in the indictment, specifically including seven counts of concealment money laundering. See 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i); see also United States v. Majors, 196 F.3d 1206, 1211 (11th Cir. 1999) (noting that § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) is “referred to as the ‘concealment’ . . . provision of the money laundering statute.”). On appeal, Gonzales asserts, for the first time, that the guilty pleas underlying two of his money laundering convictions, Counts 50 and 52, are not supported by a sufficient factual basis. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(3). This court rejects Gonzales’s arguments at the first step of plain-error review. 1 See United States v. Carillo, 860 F.3d 1293, 1300 (10th Cir. 2017) (holding that 1 The parties on appeal vigorously contest whether Gonzales’s merits-based appeal is subject to either one or both of two potential waivers of appellate rights. Appeal waivers do not, however, affect this court’s “constitutional or statutory jurisdiction.” United States v. Black, 773 F.3d 1113, 1115 n.2 (10th Cir. 2014). Because Gonzales’s Rule 11(b)(3) claims plainly fail on the merits, “this court exercises its discretion to bypass the relatively complex waiver issue[s] and resolve [Gonzales’s] appeal on the merits. Id. Such a course of action is appropriate here because the government did not raise the waiver issue until its response brief, a brief that also addressed the merits of Gonzales’s appeal. Thus, the decision to bypass resolution of the potential appellate waivers does not cause the government any additional burden. United States v. Garcia-Ramirez, 778 F.3d 856, 857 (10th Cir. 2015). In undertaking this path, however, this court again emphasizes it is only appropriate to bypass resolution of a waiver issue in a particularly narrow set of circumstances. See id. (cataloging circumstances). Gonzales’s appeal just happens to be such a case. 2 to satisfy the plain error standard, the appellant must, as the first step in a fourstep journey, demonstrate the district court committed an error). That is, we conclude the district court did not err in finding that Gonzales’s guilty pleas to Counts 50 and 52 were supported by a sufficient factual basis. The conduct Gonzales admitted as part of his plea agreement and at the plea colloquy establish the existence of every element of a violation of § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i) as to both relevant counts. Thus, exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291, this court affirms the district court’s judgment of conviction as to Counts 50 and 52.