The U.S. government is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the eight-month prison sentence imposed on David Truong Quoc Phan, one of three men convicted of participating in a jobs scam.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney James J. Benedetto notified the U.S. District Court for the NMI last Friday about their appeal. He did not indicate the reason\/s for the notice of appeal. <\/p>\n
Phan was sentenced last March 16. Last Oct. 18, the federal jury returned a guilty verdict against Phan on two counts of mail fraud, three counts of fraud in foreign labor contracting, and one count of fraud and misuse of visas and permits.<\/p>\n
Phan\u2019s co-defendants, Muksedur Rahman and Mohammed Rafiqul Islam, who are brothers, were also found guilty.<\/p>\n
Phan was sentenced to eight months in prison, while Rahman was slapped with a 48-month prison term. Islam was sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Islam, together with Rahman, was ordered to pay $188,426 in restitution to the victims. Phan and Islam are also appealing to the Ninth Circuit to have their conviction and sentence reversed.<\/p>\n
Phan\u2019s fianc\u00e9e, Analyn Nunez, and Rahman\u2019s wife, Shahinur Akter, were acquitted. <\/p>\n
Another defendant, Zeaur Rahman Dalu, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time already served.<\/p>\n
According to the U.S. government, each of the victims paid over $10,000, but when they arrived on Saipan in April of 2016, they were not given work as promised.<\/p>\n
The government named five victims, all Bangladeshis. <\/p>\n
Phan recently asked the District Court to allow his continued release pending the outcome of his appeal. The U.S. government opposed it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. government is appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[93,17148,1925,320],"class_list":["post-274501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-district-court","tag-muksedur-rahman","tag-ninth-circuit","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}