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Appeals from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas

Yophes Onyiego, Isaac Biegon, and Mahmood Lodhi were among six people convicted for carrying out a conspiracy to traffic in stolen airline tickets. Lodhi was allegedly the mastermind behind the conspiracy. Biegon and Onyiego allegedly served as ticket brokers — selling and using the false tickets. Each defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction. Specifically, Biegon challenges the government’s use of the price written and filled in on the blank airline tickets by a co-conspirator as evidence of the “face value” of those tickets. Biegon contends that this value is false — insofar as it was “made-up” by his co-conspirator — and therefore cannot be used to establish the “$5000-or-more” jurisdictional element of the crime of interstate transportation of stolen goods. We refuse to read any sort of “truth” requirement into the jurisdictional element of this criminal statute. We hold that the face value of a stolen good is the value affixed to the face of that good. We therefore affirm the conviction of Biegon. We also affirm the sentences of his co-defendants, Onyiego and Lodhi. Finally, we reverse the restitution award because the award included unrecoverable consequential damages.

I.

 
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