Before Torruella, Circuit Judge, Souter, Associate Justice,
*fn1 and Boudin, Circuit Judge.
In this appeal from convictions for bank fraud, wire fraud (as well as conspiracy to commit these offenses), and money laundering, Lenard Christi claims insufficiency of the evidence to show anything more than his mere (innocent) presence at some events in the sequence of the transactions charged, and abridgement of his Sixth Amendment right to jury trial when the trial judge closed the courtroom doors during jury instructions. We affirm.
In the course of a year and a half in 2000-2002, Christi and a co-defendant, Robert Felleman, were associated in five instances of depositing large checks (one for $15,000,000) in three different bank accounts (the one involved here being in the name of a defunct corporation), and then writing checks against the resulting, ostensible account balances or requesting substantial wire transfers from them. In none of the five was the check good. In this instance, one for about $320,000 from an entity called Allied Building Products was deposited by mail in the corporate account, seemingly endorsed over to the moribund entity by Christi, the apparent payee. Four days later, Christi and Felleman visited a branch of the bank to arrange for a transfer to an account in Taiwan of $220,000 from the balance stated after the deposit. Felleman began a series of other withdrawals against the funds that day, and on the next he and Christi went to the bank to withdraw a further $20,000; four wire transfers were made from the supposed funds to payees in Nigeria, two of them arranged by Christi. Subsequently the Allied Products check was dishonored as having been altered and was returned unpaid; it had been written in the amount of $268.96 and was not payable to Christi. Felleman and Christi gave disparate accounts of the transaction and were subsequently indicted for conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. _ 371, bank fraud, 18 U.S.C. _ 1344, wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. _ 1343, and money laundering, 18 U.S.C. _ 1957, Christi being charged both as a principal and as aiding and abetting Felleman’s activities. Felleman negotiated guilty pleas, and Christi was convicted.
