What happened
The Seventh Circuit on Wednesday affirmed Luisito Espanola's wire fraud and money laundering convictions, rejecting his bid for a new trial over WhatsApp messages the government used to tie him to a scheme involving City of Moline payments.
The panel held that a district court did not violate Espanola's right to testify by treating his production of the messages in criminal discovery as one circumstance supporting authentication under Federal Rule of Evidence 901(b)(4). Even if that theory were wrong, the court said, other evidence overwhelmingly showed the chat log was genuine.
The case arose after someone impersonating a city contractor emailed Moline, Illinois, and directed future payments to a new bank account. The city wired almost $223,000 on Dec. 16 and just over $198,000 on Dec. 30 to an account that investigators later determined belonged to Espanola, who had opened it in the name of a company 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 on a WhatsApp chat log that the defense had produced in discovery and included on its exhibit list, arguing the messages showed Espanola and an uncharged co-conspirator discussing the charged conduct in real time. The jury convicted him on all counts, and the district court sentenced him to 32 months in prison.
On appeal, Espanola argued that allowing his Rule 16 production to help authenticate the chat log forced him into an unconstitutional choice: produce the evidence and risk helping the government authenticate it, or withhold it and risk losing the ability to testify about it. The Seventh Circuit rejected that framing, saying the right-to-testify cases he relied on involved courts excluding or limiting defense testimony, while Espanola remained free to testify and chose not to.
The panel also said the messages were admissible even without relying on the discovery production. The chat log identified a participant as Luisito Espanola, included his name, address and email, discussed bank accounts he opened and controlled, and included screenshots and transaction details corroborated by bank and cryptocurrency records.
The court further rejected Espanola's argument that Rule 901(b)(4) required courts to consider the circumstances of discovery in every case. The rule, the panel said, calls for a flexible, case-by-case review of appearance, contents, internal patterns and other circumstances, and prior Seventh Circuit cases did not create a categorical discovery-evidence requirement.
The ruling leaves Espanola's convictions and sentence intact and gives prosecutors a fresh appellate endorsement for using circumstantial evidence — including, where appropriate, a defendant's own discovery production — to authenticate electronic communications.