United States v. Abouammo

1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. AHMAD ABOUAMMO, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 22-10348

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

December 4, 2024

Argued and Submitted May 16, 2024 San Francisco, California

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Edward M. Chen, District Judge Presiding D.C. No. 3:19-cr-00621- EMC-1

Jeffrey M. Smith (argued), Appellate Counsel; Matthew G Olsen, Assistant Attorney General for National Security National Security Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; Eric Cheng, Colin C. Sampson, Merry J. Chan, Assistant United States Attorneys; Ismail J. Ramsey, United States Attorney; United States Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorney, San Francisco, California; for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Carmen A. Smarandoiu (argued) and Angela Chuang, Assistant Federal Public Defenders; Jodi Linker, Federal Public Defender; Federal Public Defenders Office, San Francisco, California; for Defendant-Appellant.

Before: Kenneth K. Lee and Daniel A. Bress, Circuit Judges, and Yvette Kane, ^[*] District Judge.

SUMMARY ^[**]

Criminal Law

The panel affirmed Ahmad Abouammo's convictions for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government or official, 18 U.S.C. § 951; conspiracy to commit wire and honest services fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1349; wire and honest services fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 1346; international money laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(B)(i); and falsification of records to obstruct a federal investigation, 18 U.S.C. § 1519.

Abouammo, an employee at the company then known as Twitter, allegedly provided confidential information about dissident Saudi Twitter users to Bader Binasaker, a close associate of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In return, Abouammo received a lavish wristwatch and hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from Binasaker. A jury convicted Abouammo for his role in this arrangement and his efforts to cover it up.

Abouammo argued that the evidence was insufficient to convict him under § 951, for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government or official, because Binasaker was not a foreign "official." The panel concluded that it is unnecessary to resolve this issue because an alternative theory-that Abouammo acted at the behest of a foreign government-sufficiently supports the jury's verdict. Regardless, a rational jury could conclude that Binasaker was a foreign "official" even under Abouammo's narrow construction of that term.

Abouammo challenged his convictions for money laundering and wire fraud as time barred. Rejecting this challenge, the panel held that when the government secured a superseding indictment within six months of the dismissal of an information filed within the limitations period, the government complied with 18 U.S.C. § 3288, which, with one exception not applicable here, categorically excludes from "any statute of limitations" bar a "new indictment . . . returned in the appropriate jurisdiction within six calendar months" of the dismissal of an "information charging a felony." The superseding indictment was therefore timely.

Abouammo argued that his conviction for falsification of records with intent to obstruct a federal investigation in violation of § 1519 should be dismissed due to improper venue. Rejecting this argument, the panel held that a prosecution under § 1519 may take place in the venue where the documents were wrongfully falsified or in the venue in which the obstructed investigation was taking place. Abouammo's act of making a false document "with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence" a federal investigation continued until the document was received by the person or persons whom it was intended to affect or influence. Here, the document was received by FBI agents working out of the FBI's San Francisco office, so venue in the Northern District of California was proper.

In an accompanying memorandum disposition, the panel vacated Abouammo's sentence and remanded for resentencing.

Concurring Judge Lee agreed with Judge Bress' opinion, including his analysis of why Abouammo's venue argument fails under circuit precedent. He wrote separately to highlight that the decision does not give free rein to the government to manufacture venue and that the court should scrutinize potential fig-leaf justifications in future cases.

OPINION

BRESS, CIRCUIT JUDGE

Ahmad Abouammo, an employee at the company then known as Twitter, allegedly provided confidential information about dissident Saudi Twitter users to a close associate of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In return, Abouammo received a lavish wristwatch and hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from his Saudi contact. For his role in this arrangement and his efforts to cover it up, a jury convicted Abouammo for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government or official, 18 U.S.C. § 951, conspiracy to commit wire and honest services fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1349, wire and honest services fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 1346, international money laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2)(B)(i), and falsification of records to obstruct a federal investigation, 18 U.S.C. § 1519.

We affirm Abouammo's convictions but vacate his sentence and remand for resentencing.^[1]

I

A

In 2013, Twitter hired Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, as a Media Partnerships Manager for the Middle East and North Africa region. In this role, Abouammo was to help onboard influential content creators to Twitter and serve as a liaison to persons of influence in his geographic territory. At this time, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) had fifty percent of Twitter's users in the region, and it was identified as a key prospect for growing Twitter's business.

In June 2014, a group of Saudi entrepreneurs visited Twitter's offices in San Francisco. Abouammo arranged a tour for the group. During the visit, Abouammo met Bader Binasaker, a close associate and "right-hand-man" of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ("MbS"). MbS is a son of now-King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. In March 2013, MbS's father was the Crown Prince, the second most powerful position in the Kingdom, and MbS was named Head of the Private Office of the Crown Prince. In January 2015 MbS's father became King, appointing MbS as Minister of Defense and Head of his Royal Court. In April 2015, King Salman named MbS Deputy Crown Prince.

Binasaker was a close advisor to MbS. Binasaker was the General Supervisor of the Prince Salman Youth Center (PSYC). In 2011, MbS appointed Binasaker to be the Secretary General of the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, a charitable organization that went by the acronym "MiSK." The government's expert at trial, Dr. Kristin Diwan, testified that these organizations were "very connected to royal power and trying to forward agendas of the particular royal or of the state." Binasaker used an email address with the official domain name of His Royal Highness Prince Mohammed's Private Office. In addition, and among other things, when Binasaker traveled with a Saudi delegation for meetings at Camp David, he submitted an A-2 visa for diplomatic travelers, describing himself as a "foreign official/employee."

After the June 2014 tour at Twitter's headquarters, Binasaker emailed Abouammo with a request to "verify" MbS's Twitter account. Twitter's verification service was generally reserved for public figures and placed a blue verification check box on their account to confirm that a particular Twitter account was actually associated with that person. Media Partnerships Managers were not directly involved in the verification process but would serve as liaisons between the verification team and the public figure. After additional verification requests, a MiSK employee contacted Abouammo "[r]egarding the arrangement between you and Mr. [Binasaker] for many things," to report an account impersonating MbS. Abouammo was generally expected to address complaints from influential Twitter users in the region that imposters were using their accounts.

In December 2014, Abouammo met Binasaker at a Twitter meeting in London. At the meeting, Binasaker gave Abouammo a luxury Hublot watch. Abouammo later attempted to sell the watch online for $42,000. At the London meeting, Binasaker and Abouammo spoke about a widely followed Twitter account with the handle @mujtahidd. The @mujtahidd account was an "infamous and colorful" persona in Saudi Arabia that tweeted about alleged corruption and incompetence in the Saudi Kingdom and royal family.

After Abouammo returned from London, he received an email from Binasaker that read: "salam brother as we discussed in london for Mujtahid file." Attached to this email was a dossier describing the @mujtahidd account as "established on July 2011 under an anonymous name with [the] aim of speaking out some confidential information and leaking some hidden facts about Saudi Arabia and royal family." The document asserted that @mujtahidd violated Saudi law by slandering the royal family and igniting false rumors about them.

Twitter records show that Abouammo used an internal Twitter tool called "Profile Viewer" to repeatedly access the @mujtahidd account, beginning shortly after he met Binasaker in London in December 2014 and continuing through F ebruary 2015. Profile Viewer allowed Abouammo to search for specific Twitter users by their usernames and view their confidential personal identifying information, including the users' email addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses. Twitter's records show that on various occasions Abouammo accessed the email and phone information associated with the @mujtahidd account. In February 2015, Binasaker...