## Facts

- Miklos A. Molnar was a longtime Van Buren, Arkansas police officer and a member of a DEA task force with access to seized drug funds stored in the police evidence room.
- Molnar was one of three people with a key to the evidence room.
- Over roughly two years, Molnar took seized cash to pay personal bills and used later takings to replace earlier amounts in a continuing “rolling” scheme.
- A prosecutor became suspicious after Molnar deposited a $1,000 check marked as drug-buy money into his personal account; Molnar claimed he was reimbursing himself for money he had advanced for buys, and the police chief warned him that it looked improper.
- A separate complaint arose when Molnar was slow to return $19,000 that a state court had ordered returned; when directed to produce the money, Molnar admitted he could not and confessed to taking seized funds.
- Molnar pleaded guilty to federal embezzlement and paid full restitution.
- The presentence report yielded an advisory Guidelines range of 10 to 16 months.
- The district court varied upward and imposed 60 months’ imprisonment and two years of supervised release, reasoning in part that the stolen funds could have supported undercover drug-buy operations and that Molnar’s conduct promoted disrespect for the law.
- Molnar did not contemporaneously object to the district court’s stated variance rationale.

## Issues

1. Under plain-error review, whether the district court reversibly erred by imposing a 60-month upward variance from a 10–16 month Guidelines range based on asserted impairment of drug enforcement and promotion of disrespect for the law.
2. Whether the variance was impermissibly based on speculative or clearly erroneous factual assumptions about how the seized funds were used or would have been used (including for undercover drug buys).

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit reversed the sentence and remanded for resentencing.
- The court held that the district court’s principal justification for the extreme upward variance relied on an inadequately supported factual premise about the operational impact of the missing funds on drug enforcement.
- The court concluded that the error was plain, affected substantial rights given the size of the variance, and warranted correction to protect the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings.

## Legal Principles

- A sentencing court may not justify a substantial variance from the advisory Guidelines on speculative assumptions or clearly erroneous factual findings.
- Even under plain-error review, a sentence may be vacated when an unsupported factual premise materially drives the length of the sentence.
- The greater the deviation from the advisory Guidelines range, the more important it is that the § 3553(a) analysis rests on record-supported facts rather than hypothetical possibilities.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit vacated Molnar’s 60-month sentence because the district court’s extraordinary upward variance depended heavily on a speculative account of how the embezzled seized funds affected drug-enforcement operations, and it remanded for resentencing based on accurate, record-supported findings consistent with § 3553(a).


United States v. Molnar, 590 F.3d 912 (8th Cir. 2010)