Mohan vs. Oudomsine: The Sentencing Lottery

The clean version is a meme:

Defendant	Program	Amount received	Guidelines	Sentence
Mukund Mohan	PPP	$1,786,537	46-57 months	24 months
Vinath Oudomsine	EIDL	$85,000	8-14 months	36 months

The clean version is also dangerous, because it skips everything that makes the cases real. Mohan and Oudomsine were sentenced in different districts, by different judges, under different records, in different relief programs. Sentencing is individualized. A table is not an appellate brief.

Mohan was a Western District of Washington defendant. In 2020, according to the government's sentencing memorandum, he was the chief technology officer of BuildDirect, had previously worked at Cisco, Microsoft, and Amazon, and lived in a household earning more than $500,000 a year with more than $7 million in assets and more than $5 million in net worth.¹

Between April 26 and June 2, 2020, he submitted eight PPP applications for six businesses, seeking $5,533,182.²

The documents describe a fraud that had paperwork, aliases, and iterations. Mohan used companies he had already formed. He incorporated a new one. He bought shelf corporations. He created fake IRS Form 940s and fake payroll reports. He used invented identities, including "Mumo Patel" and "Sam Perara," to deal with lenders.³

Six applications were approved. Mohan received $1,786,537.⁴

The defense's central fact: he barely spent the money. The government seized about $1.77 million. The defense said he had spent only $16,301.16 and paid the difference into the court registry so the lenders could be repaid.⁵

That fact did two opposite things at sentencing.

For the defense, it made the case smaller. No victim would lose money. The funds had mostly sat in accounts. Mohan had no prior criminal history. He had stopped applying before law enforcement intervened. The defense asked for the sentence imposed on another Western District of Washington PPP defendant, Baoke Zhang, No. 2:20-cr-00169: 60 days.⁶

The government read the low spending the other way: Mohan, it argued, had no immediate need for the money and planned to submit false paperwork later claiming it had been spent on business expenses. Its recommendation was 36 months, below the 46-to-57-month advisory range but far above the defense request.⁷

The government's memorandum put deterrence this way: "If a wealthy tech entrepreneur can defraud a relief program of more than $1.7 million without facing serious consequence, that message of deterrence will be undermined."⁸

Judge John C. Coughenour did not impose the defense sentence. He imposed 24 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, restitution of $1,786,357 (the figure in the judgment and in the defense memorandum, $180 below the amount received), and a $100,000 fine.⁹

Now put Oudomsine beside him.

Vinath Oudomsine's case was an Economic Injury Disaster Loan case in the Southern District of Georgia. EIDL and PPP had different mechanics, different application paths, and different records; both defendants pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

Oudomsine's EIDL application was dated July 14, 2020, and he received $85,000. He spent $57,789 of it on a 1999 first-edition Charizard Pokémon card, according to the court's December 2021 order denying bond, which also records that the card had not then been surrendered.¹⁰

The card is why the case can be misunderstood. The legal record was simple: one count of wire fraud, one fake entertainment-services business, one $85,000 loan, one defendant with no prior criminal history.¹¹

At sentencing, the advisory range was 8 to 14 months. Oudomsine's lawyer asked for time served, about 126 days. The prosecutor told the court that Oudomsine had invented an entertainment-services business claiming $235,000 in revenue and ten employees.¹²

Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. went above both sides' numbers. He imposed 36 months.¹³

The transcript records why. Bowen treated the fraud as an affront to a national emergency program. He called it "an $85,000 insult" and said deterrence was the most important factor.¹⁴ He turned the defense's mitigation around: Oudomsine had acted, he said, "with a level of venality that his age, his education, his upbringing, and his life experience make it all the more culpable."¹⁴

The sentence was not a math error. It was a judgment.

Mohan's advisory range started at 46 months and ended at 57. He received 24 months. Oudomsine's advisory range started at 8 months and ended at 14. He received 36 months. One defendant went far below the floor. The other went far above the ceiling.

There are explanations. Mohan repaid the money before sentencing. Oudomsine had surrendered the card for forfeiture, but it had not been sold when Judge Bowen sentenced him, and his lawyer told the court a further restitution obligation might follow if the sale fell short.¹⁴ Mohan's defense had a local comparator in Zhang. Oudomsine stood before a judge who said deterrence was the most important factor.

Big fraud, big sentence. Small fraud, small sentence. The Mohan-Oudomsine comparison runs the other way.

Mohan was wealthy and ran a multi-company paper fraud. He sought more than $5.5 million and received nearly $1.8 million. Oudomsine obtained $85,000 by wire fraud and spent $57,789 of it on a trading card. Mohan got two years. Oudomsine got three.

Documents cited

Notes

archived copy, summary and full text at pp. 3-4. ↩
Ibid. ↩
archived copy, full text at pp. 3-5. ↩
Ibid. ↩
archived copy, summary and full text at pp. 1-6. ↩
Ibid.; archived copy. ↩
archived copy; archived copy. ↩
archived copy, deterrence discussion. ↩
Judgment in a Criminal Case, U.S. v. Mohan, Aug. 24, 2021, p. 2; DOJ, "Washington tech executive sentenced to prison for COVID-19 relief fraud scheme," Aug. 24, 2021. ↩
Order denying bond, U.S. v. Oudomsine, Dec. 29, 2021; archived copy; archived copy. ↩
archived copy. ↩
archived copy, transcript at pp. 2-10. ↩
archived copy. ↩
archived copy, transcript at pp. 16-19. ↩₁ ↩₂ ↩₃

Documents cited

Notes

Primary sources used in this article