What happened
The Seventh Circuit affirmed Luisito Espanola’s wire fraud and money laundering convictions, rejecting his bid for a new trial over WhatsApp messages that the government used to tie him to a scheme involving diverted City of Moline payments.
Writing for a panel that also included Judges Ilana Rovner and Doris Pryor, Judge Amy St. Eve said the appeal turned on whether a court may treat a defendant’s production of evidence under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 as one circumstance supporting authentication under Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(4) without infringing the defendant’s right to testify. The answer, the panel said, was no constitutional problem: “We hold it does not.”
The case arose after someone impersonating a city contractor emailed Moline, Illinois, and directed future payments to a Washington Federal Bank account. The city wired almost $223,000 and then just over $198,000 to the account, which the court said belonged to Espanola and had been opened in the name of GS International LLC, an entity he alone controlled.
A federal grand jury charged Espanola with two counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering. At trial, the government relied in part on a WhatsApp chat log between Espanola and an uncharged co-conspirator that discussed the alleged crimes in real time, including bank-account activity, movement of city funds and cryptocurrency purchases. The jury convicted him on all counts, and the district court sentenced him to 32 months in prison.
On appeal, Espanola argued that allowing the government to rely on his Rule 16 production of the messages for authentication forced him into an unconstitutional choice: produce the evidence and risk its use against him, or withhold it and risk losing the ability to testify about it. The Seventh Circuit rejected that framing, distinguishing cases where courts excluded defense testimony from this case, which involved admission of government evidence.
The panel also said Espanola remained free to testify but chose not to, making his case analogous to the circuit’s recent decision in United States v. Johnson rather than decisions such as Rock or Fieldman. Because the district court did not bar or limit his testimony, the panel said those right-to-testify precedents did not extend to his circumstances.
Even if the Rule 16-production theory raised constitutional doubt, the panel said the government had ample independent authentication evidence. The messages identified Espanola by name, used his address and email, included bank-account details for accounts he controlled, and were corroborated by bank and cryptocurrency records, screenshots and check deposits.
The ruling gives prosecutors and defense lawyers a Seventh Circuit marker on authenticating digital communications through circumstantial evidence. It also narrows a defendant’s ability to recast admission of harmful government evidence as a right-to-testify violation when the trial court has not excluded or limited defense testimony.