Man convicted of fraud found to have not delivered notice of appeal

U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona has found that a man who was slapped last year with a 48-month prison sentence in a mail fraud case did not deliver a notice of appeal to prison authorities on Saipan prior to his transfer to a prison facility in California.

In her decision on Friday, Manglona said the determination of whether Muksedur Rahman delivered a notice of appeal to the Department of Corrections officers in Susupe rests entirely on his credibility.

“Yet not one shred of evidence corroborates his story,” said the judge, adding that Rahman kept mum on a matter of such importance as his appeal of his conviction and sentence.

Rahman claimed that he did not inform his court-appointed counsel, Robert T. Torres, that he handed the notice of appeal to a DOC officer while he was still in jail on Saipan.

Rahman said he appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reverse his conviction and sentence.

Manglona held a hearing last April 2 after the Ninth Circuit remanded Rahman’s appeal to the District Court for it to find out whether Rahman delivered the notice of appeal to DOC officers prior to his April 14, 2018, transfer to a California prison.

Manglona’s finding is material to whether the notice of appeal was filed within 14 days after the entry of judgment on March 16, 2018 or amended judgment on April 10, 2018.

At the April 2 hearing, Rahman appeared via video teleconference from Bakersfield, assisted by a Bengali interpreter. Assistant U.S. attorneys Eric O’Malley appeared for the U.S. government. Rahman’s court-appointed counsel, Torres, appeared.

Rahman testified along with DOC Corrections Lt. Joaquin Sablan.

On March 9, 2018, U.S. District Court for the NMI designated Judge John C. Coughenour, who presided over the trial of Rahman and co-defendants, sentenced him to 48 months in prison after the jury convicted him on two counts of mail fraud and three counts of fraud in foreign labor contracting.

The defendant then self-surrendered to DOC. On April 13, 2018, Rahman was moved from DOC to a Bureau of Prisons facility in San Bernardino, California, and then transferred to a federal prison in Taft, California on May 25, 2018.

After talking with another Taft inmate, Rahman checked the status of his appeal with the clerk of the District Court for the NMI.

On July 23, 2018, Rahman received a response from the District Court’s clerk that no notice of appeal had been filed and there was no record of an appeal.

At the April 2 evidentiary hearing, Rahman testified that he had changed his mind while in custody at DOC, and had decided to appeal.

Rahman said he prepared the notice of appeal in DOC sometime between March 14 and 16, 2018, with the assistance of another inmate that he could not identify.

Rahman said he did not tell Torres of his intention to pursue an appeal.

DOC’s Sablan testified that he searched for Rahman’s name in the logs for the relevant dates and did not find any entry related to Rahman.

Sablan testified that it is highly unlikely that the absence of a record is because of an oversight by DOC, considering that officers take the handling of court documents and appeal papers very seriously.

As for Rahman’s testimony that an inmate helped him prepared the notice of appeal, Sablan recalled that an inmate in his 50s died of cancer in April 2018.

In her order Friday, Manglona said one can understand why Rahman would not have mentioned the notice of appeal to Torres, whose advice he was casting aside.

“But why did he not tell a single friend, a single family member, a single Corrections officer, or any fellow inmate?” the judge asked.

It is entirely possible that an inmate helped Rahman prepare a notice of appeal, Manglona said, but then he had another change of mind and decided to follow Torres’ advice and not appeal.

Much later, the judge pointed out, when Rahman found out his brother and other co-defendants had appealed, he may have felt remorse and is now insisting he went ahead with the appeal.

“What actually happened cannot be known. What is known, however, is that Rahman has nothing to back up his claim,” Manglona noted.

The judge directed the courts’ clerk to serve a copy of her decision on the Ninth Circuit.

Rahman’s co-defendants are businessman David Trung Quoc Phan and Rahman’s brother, Rafiqul Islam, Phan’s fiancée Analyn Nunez, Rahman’s wife Shahinur Akter, and Zeaur Rahman Dalu.

Phan was slapped with an eight-month prison term, while Rahman and Islam were sentenced to 48 months and 18 months imprisonment, respectively, for their roles in a scheme to bring Bangladeshi men to Saipan on promises of high-paying jobs and green cards in exchange for cash.

Phan’s fiancée, Nunez, and Rahman’s wife, Akter, were acquitted. Zeaur Rahman Dalu pleaded guilty.

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.

The government named five victims, all Bangladeshis, in the case.