Background
In August 2018, Babajide Adefusi pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting passport fraud in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Under his plea agreement, he admitted to using counterfeit passports to open bank accounts and facilitate wire transfers of fraudulently obtained funds, resulting in approximately $2.2 million in losses. The SDTX plea agreement included a non-prosecution promise: the government agreed not to pursue additional charges “arising out of the scheme alleged in the Information.” Paragraph 11 of the agreement explicitly stated it bound “only the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas” and “[i]t does not bind any other United States Attorney.” Adefusi received a 28-month sentence and was released in July 2020.
Five years after his SDTX conviction, in March 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois indicted Adefusi for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The charge alleged he conspired from March to October 2018 to defraud E-MedRx, a pharmacy services company in Springfield, Illinois, inducing it to wire $365,467.75 in funds intended for pharmacies to accounts controlled by defendants. Adefusi moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing the SDTX plea agreement barred any U.S. Attorney’s Office from prosecuting him for conduct overlapping with the passport fraud scheme. The district court denied the motion, holding the SDTX plea agreement bound only that office. Adefusi conditionally pleaded guilty, preserving his right to appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss. The court held that the SDTX plea agreement unambiguously binds only the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas and does not restrict the prosecution authority of other U.S. Attorney’s Offices. The panel rejected Adefusi’s argument that Paragraph 10’s reference to “the United States” and “scheme alleged” created a separate, broader non-prosecution promise binding all offices. The court found Paragraph 11’s plain language unequivocal: the “plea agreement binds only” the SDTX office, and “[i]t does not bind any other United States Attorney.” Nothing in the agreement qualified this limitation.
The court emphasized that when interpreting the plea agreement as a whole, the textual differences Adefusi relied upon—”scheme alleged” in Paragraph 10 versus “conduct charged” in Paragraph 11—do not create meaningful ambiguity given the context of the passport fraud conduct alleged. Accepting Adefusi’s interpretation would render Paragraph 11 meaningless in violation of basic contract interpretation principles. The court further noted that the agreement’s preamble (identifying the “United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas”) and the cooperation sections reinforced the narrow interpretation. Because the agreement is unambiguous on its face, the court declined to consider extrinsic evidence and did not address whether one U.S. Attorney’s Office could bind another.
Key Takeaways
- Plea agreements are interpreted as contracts under general contract law principles, with ambiguities construed against the government drafter.
- When a plea agreement explicitly limits its scope to a single U.S. Attorney’s Office, other offices are not bound by its non-prosecution promises.
- Textual variations within different paragraphs of a plea agreement do not create ambiguity if the overall document clearly states its geographic or jurisdictional limitation.
- Courts will not resort to extrinsic evidence to interpret an unambiguous plea agreement, nor will they consider whether one office had authority to bind another absent ambiguity.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies a critical issue for federal criminal defendants: a plea agreement negotiated with one U.S. Attorney’s Office provides no protection against prosecution by another office for related conduct, absent explicit language binding all offices. This has substantial practical consequences for defendants involved in multi-district fraud schemes, particularly those affecting interstate commerce. The ruling reinforces that each U.S. Attorney’s Office operates as an independent prosecutorial entity, and defendants cannot leverage a favorable agreement in one jurisdiction to shield themselves from prosecutions in others.
The decision also note a circuit split among the federal courts of appeals regarding the default interpretation of ambiguous references to “the United States” or “the government” in plea agreements. While some circuits (Third, Fourth, and Eighth) presume such references bind all U.S. Attorneys absent express disclaimers, the Seventh Circuit aligns with the Second Circuit’s view that a plea agreement binds only the office that negotiated it unless affirmatively stated otherwise. By finding the agreement unambiguous, the court avoided opining on which approach is correct, but practitioners should be aware the circuit in which a plea is entered may affect how broadly or narrowly its protections extend.