In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ Nos. 18-1200 & 18-1263 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. NIKOLAY TANTCHEV and BATMAGNAI CHOGSOM, Defendants-Appellants. ____________________ Appeals from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 16-cr-174 — Amy J. St. Eve, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED NOVEMBER 1, 2018 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 21, 2019 ____________________ Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and MANION and ROVNER, Cir- cuit Judges. MANION, Circuit Judge. After a six-day trial involving twenty-nine witnesses, a federal jury convicted Nikolay Tantchev of exporting and attempting to export stolen cars, submitting false documents to customs officials, and structur- ing financial transactions to avoid federal reporting require- ments. That same jury acquitted Tantchev’s co-defendant, 2 Nos. 18-1200 & 18-1263 Batmagnai Chogsom, of charges related to the stolen cars and false documents, but it convicted Chogsom of making a false statement to an IRS agent. The district court sentenced Tantchev to 40 months’ imprisonment and Chogsom to 3 years’ probation. Both defendants appeal their convictions. Tantchev al- leges several errors by the district court at trial, and Chogsom challenges the sufficiency of the evidence against him. We af- firm the convictions. I. Tantchev, a native of Bulgaria, owned a trucking business that operated out of a warehouse in Chicago. Chogsom, a Mongolian immigrant, worked for Tantchev. In 2008, Tantchev began shipping containers of goods to Bulgaria using a company called Atlantic Express. Seeing an opportunity, Tantchev started a small side-business arrang- ing shipping containers from Atlantic Express for others. Tantchev would order containers from Atlantic Express at a discount and charge a premium for acting as a middle man. Though he had the containers delivered to his Chicago ware- house, this was a separate operation from his normal trucking business. Through Chogsom, members of Chicago’s Mongo- lian community began coming to Tantchev to set up ship- ments to Mongolia. These shipments often included vehicles. According to Tantchev, his involvement with these inter- national shipments was minimal. A customer looking to ship something would approach Tantchev or Chogsom. Tantchev would then order a shipping container from Atlantic Express, which would drop it off at Tantchev’s warehouse. The cus- tomer would come to the warehouse and load the container Nos. 18-1200 & 18-1263 3 himself, and the container would be sealed. Atlantic Express would then pick up the loaded container from the warehouse. Tantchev would fill out the appropriate papers based on what his customers told him and send the papers and any other documents to Atlantic Express to forward to United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In the early part of 2011, CBP discovered three of Tantchev’s shipments to Mongolia contained stolen cars.1 Ad- ditionally, the documentation Tantchev had submitted did not accurately reflect the contents of the containers. One con- tainer was supposed to hold a Honda, but instead contained a stolen BMW. Two others were declared as containing min- ing machinery, but they actually contained a stolen Mercedes and two stolen Lexuses. ...
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