No. 18-2896 ___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Asmerom Keleta, also known as Ace

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis ____________

Submitted: September 27, 2019 Filed: February 6, 2020 ____________ Before KELLY, MELLOY, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ KELLY, Circuit Judge.

Asmerom Keleta was convicted by a jury of conspiring to defraud the United States and willfully aiding and assisting in the filing of a false tax return. He appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress, its rejection of his challenges to improper statements made by the government, and its application of a four-level role enhancement to his base offense level at sentencing. After careful review, we affirm Keleta’s convictions but vacate his sentence and remand for resentencing.

I. Investigation

Asmerom “Ace” Keleta owned Eriace Enterprise, LLC (Eriace), which operated several tax-preparation businesses in the St. Louis metropolitan area under the names U-City Tax Service and Ace Express Tax Service. In 2012, the IRS’s Scheme Development Center (SDC) forwarded information about Eriace to the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division. After reviewing the information, investigators noted that a high percentage of tax returns prepared by Eriace claimed certain tax credits. They also found that much of the information used to seek these tax credits “was not verifiable by other information filed with the IRS” and that the unverifiable information was often combined with verifiable information in ways that made the taxpayer eligible for the maximum or near the maximum available tax credit. The personal tax returns for Keleta and U-City Tax Service employees Miyoshi Lewis and Teklom “Tek” Paulos fit this pattern.

On February 27, 2013, IRS Special Agent Danette Coleman conducted an undercover operation at a U-City Tax Service branch in University City, Missouri. Lewis prepared a tax return for Coleman while Paulos helped another customer. Keleta was not present at the time. Lewis initially calculated a refund amount of $44 based on the information Coleman provided. When Coleman asked why the refund was so low, Lewis responded that she could “make it more, but the fee will go up.” Lewis then entered false information and calculated a refund of approximately $4,200. She charged Coleman $500 cash for obtaining this increased refund.

The IRS also received three anonymous letters alleging tax fraud at that U-City Tax Service branch. The anonymous informant claimed that Keleta had sold the use of his preparer tax identification number (PTIN) and electronic filing identification

-2- number (EFIN) to several individuals, including Paulos, who used them to file tax returns containing fraudulent information. The IRS corroborated that Lewis, Paulos, and several other individuals named in the letters were “friends” on Facebook. The IRS also found that numerous withdrawals from Eriace’s business checking account appeared to be personal in nature.

Based on this information, IRS Special Agent Nicholas Kenney obtained a warrant to search the U-City Tax Service branch and seize records found on the premises. The government executed the warrant on April 13, 2013. It seized computers, cell phones, client files, and other items, including a signature stamp