United States v. Alireza Bakhtiari

Alireza Bakhtiari pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). The district court 1 sentenced him to fifty-one months in prison and three years of supervised release. Bakhtiari raises four challenges to his sentence. We reject his arguments and affirm.

I

From 2009 to 2012, B.H., a St. Louis lawyer, defended the same corporate client in three pro se lawsuits brought by Bakhti-ari. The first two lawsuits settled. In the third suit, for defamation, B.H. came to suspect that Bakhtiari had forged the allegedly defamatory emails “sent” by…