## Facts

- Federal authorities investigated a fraudulent religious-worker visa scheme involving a Los Angeles religious center and its director, who allegedly paid visa recipients wages that were then returned to him.
- Orit Anjel entered the United States as an ostensible religious worker; her husband cashed her paychecks and returned the funds to the scheme’s organizer.
- After Orit’s employment was terminated, her husband retained Alfred Nash Villalobos, an attorney, to recover money allegedly owed to the Anjels.
- Villalobos learned the government sought to interview Orit in connection with the investigation.
- The government alleged Villalobos approached the organizer and the organizer’s counsel demanding payment, offering in return that Orit would comply with what the organizer wanted in the federal investigation.
- Villalobos contended he was pursuing a legitimate wage-related claim and seeking recovery of money he believed was owed to his client.
- A federal jury convicted Villalobos of attempted extortion under the Hobbs Act and endeavoring to obstruct justice; the district court entered judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether the Hobbs Act extortion instruction erroneously treated all threats to testify or provide information as “wrongful” whenever intended to induce or exploit fear, effectively eliminating the statute’s independent “wrongful” requirement.
2. Whether the district court erred by precluding a claim-of-right defense to the attempted extortion charge based on Villalobos’s asserted belief that the demanded money was legitimately owed.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit held the district court’s Hobbs Act “wrongful” instruction was legally erroneous because it collapsed “wrongfulness” into intent to exploit fear and failed to require an independent assessment of the means used.
- The Ninth Circuit nonetheless found the instructional error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because the threats, as used, were wrongful as a matter of law.
- The court held the district court did not err in denying a claim-of-right instruction on these facts, and it did not decide whether such a defense is generally available in non-labor Hobbs Act cases.
- The court affirmed the convictions for attempted extortion and endeavoring to obstruct justice.

## Legal Principles

- Hobbs Act extortion requires obtaining (or attempting to obtain) property with consent induced by the wrongful use of force, violence, or fear; “wrongful” is an element requiring independent analysis.
- For nonviolent threats not inherently unlawful (including threats to provide truthful information, testify, or pursue lawful processes), courts must evaluate whether the means, as actually employed in context, are wrongful, without treating wrongfulness as automatic.
- Using the prospect of cooperation or testimony in a federal criminal investigation as a payment-conditioned bargaining tool can constitute wrongful means under the Hobbs Act.
- A claimed entitlement to money does not justify employing coercive methods that corrupt or seek to corrupt federal investigative or judicial processes; thus, a claim-of-right theory does not defeat extortion where the means are wrongful.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit affirmed Villalobos’s extortion and obstruction convictions, holding that although the jury was improperly instructed that certain testimony-related threats are per se wrongful, the error did not affect the verdict because the evidence established wrongful use of threats to influence a federal investigation in exchange for payment, and any claim-of-right theory could not legitimize that conduct.


United States v. Villalobos, 748 F.3d 953 (9th Cir. 2014)