United States v. Donald G. Ford (97-6097/6270) Sandra Hutchins Ford (97-6271)

OPINION

Don Ford and his wife, Sandra Hutchins Ford, 1 appeal their convictions for operation of an illegal gambling business, 18 U.S.C. § 1955 (1994), and money laundering, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1957 (1994) (both defendants) and 1956(a)(l)(B)(1994) (Ford only). Ford also appeals his conviction under 26 U.S.C. § 7206(1) (1994) for filing a false income tax return. Both raise numerous claims of error in denying various motions and in sentencing. Ford and Hutchins raise Fourth Amendment issues concerning the search of Ford’s bingo hall and another building. They also contend that the district court erroneously determined that there were no permissible bases for departure from the Guidelines sentencing range. We reverse Ford’s tax conviction because it is based on evidence that was seized in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. We affirm Ford’s and Hutchins’s gambling and money laundering convictions, but remand Ford’s case for *572 resentencing in light of the reversal of his tax conviction.

Don Ford owned and operated the Arcade Bingo Plaza, which was in the business of conducting bingo games for the benefit of charities. Under Kentucky law, it is illegal to promote gambling (which includes bingo) other than “charitable gaming” subject to complex rules that were amended twice during the time periods relevant to this case. See Ky.Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 528.010(10) (Michie 1985); 1990 Ky.Rev.Stat. and R. Serv. ch. 469 (Banks-Baldwin) (effective July 13, 1990); 1992 Ky.Rev.Stat. and R. Serv. ch. 461(Banks-Baldwin) (effective April 13, 1992). Throughout the time in question, gambling could only be legal “charitable gaming” if it was operated by a tax exempt organization; if that organization had maintained tax exempt status for five years before the gaming; if the gaming was conducted exclusively by unpaid volunteers for the charity; and if the proceeds were used solely for the charitable purposes of the organization. During various times there were many other requirements for the conduct of charitable gaming, including a limitation of $5,000 per day in prizes and limitations on the number of days and hours per week the organization could conduct gaming.

Ford first operated the Arcade Bingo Plaza in Louisville, Kentucky in 1990, conducting bingo games for various charities, such as the Knights of Columbus. Ford would charge the charities rental and overhead for use of the hall. Hutchins was Ford’s second in command at the Arcade Plaza, and when he was not there she conducted the business. Instead of using volunteers from the sponsoring charities to run the bingo games in accordance with Kentucky law, Ford hired workers. The workers were paid from money “cut” or “skimmed” from the bingo proceeds. The skim was made by the controller for the session, then given to Hutchins. The workers were paid in cash, often surreptitiously handed to them in a handshake. The amount of money skimmed varied with the size of the crowd, because the more players there were, the larger the amount that could be skimmed without the players detecting the diminution of the prize money. Sometimes there was cash left over from the skim after the workers were paid; this money would be put in the safe in “Mr. Ford’s compartment.”

In November 1990 Ford sold the Arcade Plaza to his employee Clay Ballinger, for $1 down and $249,999 in credit. Ford had no further role in the operation of the bingo hall, except to collect payments from Ballinger, until the end of 1991.

At that time Ford came up with the idea of controlling his own charitable sponsor. Ford bought the Arcade Plaza back from Ballinger. Ford reactivated a lapsed post of the Regular Veterans Association on December 16, 1991. Later, he registered several other RVA Posts and suborganiza-tions. Because of the statutory limitations on the number of sessions one organization could sponsor and the amount of prize money an organization could award in one day, once the limits had been reached for one RVA sponsor, Ford would substitute another RVA sponsor. At a Christmas party for the Arcade workers in 1991, Ford told the workers that the RVA was going to sponsor bingo games at the Arcade Plaza. The workers testified that Ford expected them to join the RVA in order to work at the Arcade Plaza. Bingo patrons at the hall were invited to join the RVA, and the RVA subsidized their $5 dues with a bingo pass worth $5.

Ford made himself treasurer and Sandra Hutchins secretary of the RVA entities he controlled. Ford and Hutchins were the signatories on the various RVA bank accounts. The other officers were Ford’s employees or long-time associates who had virtually no knowledge of the RVA posts’ operation or function. For instance, Clay Ballinger was president of one post, although he couldn’t say which. He testified at trial, “To this day, I really can’t tell you what RVA is.” Roy Bunch, president of *573 RVA Post No. 1, stated: “I was President of the club, but I had no position ... Well, I had no authority, let’s put it that way.”

After the RVAs began sponsoring bingo at the Arcade Plaza, the method of paying non-RVA charitable sponsors changed. Rather than the old system of paying the sponsors the net proceeds, Ford and Hutchins began paying a flat fee of $500 in the form of a check and $500 cash “discreetly” handed to the sponsor’s representative. The result of the new system was that the non-RVA sponsors made less and the Arcade Plaza kept more of the proceeds. In addition, Ford began giving the RVA the proceeds of the pull-tab games sold by vendors on the bingo floor during other sponsors’ sessions.

After Kentucky law was changed in April 1992 to forbid the award of more than $5,000 in prizes in one day, 1992 Ky.Rev.Stat. and R. Serv. ch. 461, Hutch-ins altered Arcade Plaza records to eliminate any record of prizes exceeding the $5,000 limit.

After police executed a search warrant on the Arcade Bingo Plaza and the RVA Hall across the street, Ford and Hutchins were indicted on two counts of operating a gambling business in violation of state law, 18 U.S.C. § 1955. Ford was also indicted on twenty-eight counts of engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property for transactions involving gambling proceeds, 18 U.S.C. § 1957; three counts of engaging in transactions undertaken to disguise the nature, location, source, ownership or control of criminally derived . money, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(l)(B)(i) and (ii); and one forfeiture count. Hutchins was indicted on two counts of engaging in monetary transactions with criminally derived proceeds, 18 U.S.C. § 1957, and one forfeiture count. (Offenses under both section 1956 and section 1957 are referred to as “money laundering” offenses.)

Ford was also indicted in a separate case of eleven counts of tax offenses completely unrelated to the bingo operation. During the search of the RVA Hall at 2902 South Seventh Street Road, across from the Arcade Plaza, police seized- documents that had no relation to the bingo operation, including files from 1984 to 1988 relating to a real estate transaction known as the “Huber’s deal.” In the Huber’s deal, Ford had sold land to Huber’s, Incorporated for $1.5 million, in the form of $400,000 down and a note'for $1.1 million. Ford sold the $1.1 million note to his accountant for $800,000 and took a $300,000 loss from the sale transaction on his 1986 income tax. The accountant paid Ford for the note with the proceeds of a bank loan; simultaneously, Ford used the $800,000 to purchase a certificate of deposit which Ford pledged to secure the accountant’s bank loan. When Huber’s paid the $800,000, the accountant paid off the loan and the bank released its lien on Ford’s certificate of deposit. The accountant then assigned the Huber’s, Inc. note back to Ford, who eventually received the remaining $330,-969.33 payment from Huber’s, Inc. in 1988. Ford did not report that payment as income on his 1988 tax return.

After a jury trial on the gambling and money laundering charges, Ford was convicted of both gambling counts, twenty-six counts of section 1957 money laundering and one count of section 1956 money laundering. Hutchins was convicted of one of the gambling counts and two counts of section 1957 money laundering. In the separately tried tax case, Ford was convicted of one count of filing a false income tax return, 26 U.S.C.- § 7206(1), for failing to report income on his 1988 return.

Ford was sentenced to twenty months’ imprisonment in the tax case, and 108 months in the gambling and money laundering case, to be served concurrently with each other. Hutchins was sentenced to forty-one months’ imprisonment. Both appeal from their convictions and their sentences.

I.

Ford contends that the search of his buildings violated his Fourth Amend *574 ment rights because the warrant was not sufficiently particular and because federal agents improperly took advantage of a search conducted under a state warrant.

Louisville Police Department officers conducted the search under a state warrant based on an affidavit. Three IRS agents also assisted in executing the warrants. The affidavit supporting the warrant described the Louisville Police Department’s investigation of Donald Ford’s bingo operations. Police had visited the Arcade Bingo Plaza building, where Donald Ford and his subordinates Sandra Hutchins and Clay Ballinger conducted bingo games, which they claimed were for the benefit of charities. The affidavit described numerous violations of the statutory requirements for charitable gaming, such as payment of the “volunteer” workers, payment of prizes exceeding $5,000 per day, and operation of bingo games supposedly sponsored by charities that had no representatives present during the game. The affidavit also stated facts indicating that the RVA sponsors were actually shells having no charitable or fraternal function, but existing only as alter egos of Donald Ford. The affiant recited facts that would support an inference that Hutchins and Ballinger had taken home the proceeds from the bingo games, and that Ford kept numerous lock boxes at various banks containing cash.

The warrant contained ten clauses listing items to be seized. Some of the clauses were expressly limited by reference to illegal gambling or bingo. However, some clauses had no such limitation, in particular the category authorizing seizure of: “Books, records, receipts, bank statements and records, money drafts, letters of credit, money orders and cash checks, money wrappers, passbooks, bank checks, automatic teller machine receipts, Western Union receipts, safety deposit box keys, and other items evidencing the obtaining, secreting, transfer, and/or concealment of assets and the obtaining, secreting, transfer, concealment and or expenditure of money.”

The police executing the warrant seized several file cabinets and eleven boxes of documents. The officer in charge testified at the suppression hearing that they seized “basically most of the documents” at 2902 South Seventh. Another officer agreed that they “pretty much took everything.” Many of the documents related to Ford Industries and Durrett Investigations, auto-financing and private investigation businesses, respectively, also owned by Ford. Among the documents seized were promissory notes, deeds, and related papers, all dated between 1984 and 1988, concerning the Huber’s deal, which was completely unrelated to the gambling operation.

The search took place in the late night and early morning of August 28 and 29, 1992. The documents seized were kept at the Louisville Police headquarters until September 23, when they were transferred to the IRS offices. In November 1992, the IRS officially obtained custody of the documents by grand jury subpoena.

A.

The tax prosecution was based on documents seized in the August 28-29 search. Ford moved to suppress the documents on the grounds that if the documents were within the scope of the search warrant, the search warrant was overbroad, and if the search warrant was read narrowly enough to be valid, the documents were not within its scope. The government did not contend that the warrant should be narrowed by construction, see Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 480-81, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 49 L.Ed.2d 627 (1976), and therefore limited to documents related to bingo. Instead, the government contended that it needed all Ford’s financial documents in order to determine his “overall financial picture” and thus establish what money he had available, where the money came from, and what happened to it. This could require law enforcement officials to go *575 back “ten years or more.” Therefore, according to the government, the warrant properly permitted seizure of all financial documents in the buildings, whether or not related to the bingo operations in time or subject matter.

The magistrate judge recommended that the warrant be held valid “in view of the complex nature of the investigation, the pervasive presence of fraud, and the inability of the investigating officers to determine more specifically what items would be subject to seizure.” 2 . The district court conducted a de novo review and held that the affidavit on which the warrant was based “implicitly established” that Ford’s organization was “permeated with fraud” and that the warrant was therefore not overbroad, citing United States v. Oloyede, 982 F.2d 133, 141 (4th Cir.1993).

We review de novo the district court’s conclusion on the overbreadth issue. United States v. Durk, 149 F.3d 464, 465 (6th Cir.1998) (deciding whether description of premises was overbroad); Davis v. Gracey, 111 F.3d 1472, 1478 (10th Cir.1997) (deciding whether description of items to be seized was overbroad).

The Fourth Amendment guarantees that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” (Emphasis added.) The particularity requirement prohibits the issuance of warrants that would let officers seize “one thing under a warrant describing another.” Davis, 111 F.3d at 1478 (quoting Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196, 48 S.Ct. 74, 72 L.Ed. 231 (1927)). “A general order to explore and rummage through a person’s belongings is not permitted.” United States v. Blakeney, 942 F.2d 1001, 1026 (6th Cir.) (quotation omitted), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1008, 112 S.Ct. 646, 116 L.Ed.2d 663 (1991).

The degree of specificity required in a warrant depends on what information is reasonably available to the police in the case. Id. at 1027. A general description may suffice when the police could supply no better information, but fail when a narrower description was available. Id. In particular, when the suspect himself has made it difficult to describe particularly the items to be seized, a broad warrant is permissible. See United States v. Bentley, 825 F.2d 1104, 1110 (7th Cir.) (criminal enterprise does not get extra protection from the Fourth Amendment by choosing a form of operation that generates huge amounts of paper), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 901, 108 S.Ct. 240, 98 L.Ed.2d 198 (1987); United States v. London, 66 F.3d 1227, 1238 (1st Cir.1995) (general search permitted where suspect had mingled legitimate business documents with documents probative of crime), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1155, 116 S.Ct. 1542, 134 L.Ed.2d 646 (1996).

We have recently upheld a warrant containing a paragraph identical to the broadest language in the warrant before us (“Books, records, receipts, bank statements and records, money drafts, letters of credit, money orders and cashier’s checks, money wrappers, passbooks, bank checks, automatic teller machine receipts, Western Union receipts, safety deposit box keys, and other items evidencing the obtaining, secreting, transfer, and/or concealment of assets and the obtaining, secreting, transfer, concealment and/or expenditure of money”). In United States v. Ables, 167 F.3d 1021 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 119 S.Ct. 2378, — L.Ed.2d — (1999), another Louisville bingo hall search case, we held that the language quoted above did not authorize a general search. Id. at 1033-34. Notably, there was no suggestion in Abies that the warrant was used to seize documents that *576 could not have pertained to bingo proceeds.

However, in this case, the quoted language authorized a broader search than was reasonable given the facts in the affidavit supporting the warrant. The affidavit stated that the first of Ford’s RVA posts was incorporated in December 1991, and there was no indication in the affidavit of criminal activity before that date. The affidavit described an investigation beginning on April 24,1992. It also reported an interview with Clay Ballinger, who said he had operated the bingo himself but had “sold the Arcade Plaza Bingo back to Mr. Ford in 1991.” However, the police seized promissory notes, deeds, and related papers dated between 1984 and 1988, which had no relation to the bingo operation. In Blakeney a warrant authorizing a search for “jewelry” was overbroad because the agent applying for the search warrant had available an inventory of the specific items of jewelry that had been stolen. 942 F.2d at 1027. Failure to limit broad descriptive terms by relevant dates, when such dates are available to the police, will render a warrant overbroad. United States v. Cardwell, 680 F.2d 75, 78 (9th Cir.1982); United States v. Abrams, 615 F.2d 541, 545 (1st Cir.1980)(“A time frame should also have been incorporated into the warrant.”); In re Application of Lafayette Academy, 610 F.2d 1, 6 (1st Cir.1979). We have held as much in an unpublished case. United States v. Nagalingam, No. 97-6433, 1998 WL 739822, at *3 (6th Cir.1998); see also United States v. Sissler, No. 91-2113, 1992 WL 126974, at *6-7 (6th Cir.1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1079, 113 S.Ct. 1044, 122 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993).

The government argues that it was necessary to seize documents antedating the bingo operation to establish what money Ford had before the bingo business started. This would help the government to identify which of his present assets could be bingo proceeds. This argument would allow virtually unlimited seizure of a lifetime’s worth of documentation, which is extremely intrusive. Moreover, the impracticability of tracing the origin of every dollar Ford owned to show whether it came from some enterprise other than bingo, casts doubt on whether the government really means to take on such a herculean task. At any rate, this rationale was not articulated in the affidavit, and therefore we need not decide whether it would have provided a justification for the warrant if it had been presented to the magistrate. See Lafayette Academy, 610 F.2d at 6 n. 9 (rejecting justification for the seizure of records predating offense as being unsupported in affidavit).

Similarly, we reject the government’s argument that it seized the Huber’s, Inc. documents because the storage of Ford’s personal documents at the RVA Hall showed Ford and the RVA were alter egos. Again, this argument would allow an extreme intrusion for evidence of very little probative value. The government at trial used the documents for an entirely different purpose than simply to prove that they were stored at the RVA Hall.

The government further argues that there was probable cause to seize all the documents at the RVA Hall because the business carried on there was “permeated with fraud.” Other circuits have upheld extremely broad warrants on such a theory. E.g., United States v. Humphrey, 104 F.3d 65, 69 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1235, 117 S.Ct. 1833, 137 L.Ed.2d 1038 (1997); Oloyede, 982 F.2d at 140-41; United States v. Sawyer, 799 F.2d 1494,1508 (11th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1069, 107 S.Ct. 961, 93 L.Ed.2d 1009 (1987); United States v. Kail, 804 F.2d 441, 445 (8th Cir.1986); United States v. Brien, 617 F.2d 299, 309 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 919, 100 S.Ct. 1854, 64 L.Ed.2d 273 (1980). The affidavit definitely contained evidence that Ford was abusing the form of charitable organizations in order to run bingo games for personal profit. However, the affidavit did not disclose any reason to believe that the scheme began before December 1991, the *577 date given in the affidavit as the date when Ford reactivated his first RVA post. Even if one business carried on at a site is permeated with fraud, if other businesses run at the same site are separable and are not shown to be related to the suspected crime, a warrant permitting seizure of all documents at the site is not justified. Voss v. Bergsgaard, 774 F.2d 402, 406 (10th Cir.1985); Bentley, 825 F.2d at 1110. As in Voss, 774 F.2d at 405, the over-breadth of the warrant in this case is illustrated by the items actually seized under it — here, documents dating from years before the bingo operation began and which pertain to an entirely unrelated crime.

The government argues that even if the warrant was overbroad, the documents relating to the Huber’s, Inc. deal would inevitably have been discovered in the course of the IRS’s pending civil investigation of Ford’s 1988 tax return. Under the inevitable discovery doctrine, illegally seized evidence may be admitted despite the exclusionary rule if the government can prove that it would have obtained the evidence from lawful sources even if the illegal' seizure never happened. United States v. Kennedy, 61 F.3d 494, 499 (6th Cir.1995), cert. denied, 517 U.S. 1119, 116 S.Ct. 1351, 134 L.Ed.2d 520 (1996). The government can prove this either by showing' that “an independent, untainted investigation ... inevitably would have uncovered the same evidence or [by showing] other compelling facts establishing that the disputed evidence inevitably would have been discovered.” Id. Application of this doctrine necessarily requires some speculation about what would have happened if events had unfolded differently than they did. United States v. Leake, 95 F.3d 409, 412 (6th Cir.1996). However, we must keep speculation at a minimum by focusing on “demonstrated historical facts capable of ready verification or impeachment.” Id. (quoting Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 444-45 n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984)). The government can .satisfy its burden by showing that routine procedures .that police .would have used regardless of the illegal search would have resulted, in the discovery of the disputed evidence. Kennedy, 61 F.3d at 500. However, if the defendant shows that the police were not in fact following those routine procedures in the particular case, the government’s evidence about what police would have done must bow to contrary evidence about what they actually did. For instance, in Leake, 95 F.3d at 418 n. 17 and 418 n. 19, the government argued that police would inevitably have acted on certain leads. However, the evidence showed that the police did not in fact take action on those leads in a “reasonably timely manner,” 95 F.3d at 418 n. 17, and therefore the court held that the government had not carried its burden of proving inevitable discovery.

The district court’s application of the inevitable discovery rule is a mixed question of fact and law which we review de novo. Kennedy, 61 F.3d at 497.

In this case, before the illegal search took place, the IRS had issued a notice of deficiency to Ford for the 1988 tax year, based on his claimed net operating loss carryforward from 1986. Ford petitioned the United States Tax Court for relief on November 2, 1992, contending that the IRS had incorrectly disallowed the net operating loss carryforward. On December 28, 1992, the IRS filed an answer conceding the case: “[R]eview of taxpayer’s records, not available to respondent’s agent at the time notice was issued, has persuaded respondent that petitioners’ 1988 return was substantially correct as filed.”

At the suppression hearing, the government did not call William Shouse, the IRS attorney who had actually handled the tax court case. Instead, it called another IRS attorney, Jennifer Decker, who did not handle the Ford suit, and asked her what she would have done had she been handling the case. She testified about how *578 she would have tracked down the same documents that were illegally seized, obtaining them from IRS files and from Huber’s, Inc., if Ford did not produce them. The district court credited this testimony in holding that the seized documents would have inevitably been discovered without the illegal search.

Here, the testimony about what the IRS would have done in investigating this case is inconsistent with what the IRS actually did — it conceded the correctness of Ford’s position, undertook no discovery in the case, and ultimately entered an agreed dismissal of the case. As in Leake, the record does not substantiate the government’s claim that it was hot on the trail of the disputed evidence. The government has not carried its burden of proving the inevitability of discovery.

We therefore hold that the documents seized from 2902 South Seventh Street Road pertaining to the Huber’s deal, the sale of the Huber’s note to the accountant and the accountant’s reassignment of the note to Ford must be suppressed because they were seized in violation of Ford’s Fourth Amendment rights. 3 Ford’s tax conviction must be reversed.

B.

Ford and Hutchins contend that the district court should have suppressed the evidence seized in the August 28-29 search in the gambling case as well as the tax case. They argue that since the warrant was overbroad, all the evidence seized under it should be suppressed. To the contrary, the remedy for an overbroad warrant is to sever the overbroad portions of the warrant from those portions that are sufficiently particular. United States v. Blakeney, 942 F.2d 1001, 1027 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 502 U.S. 1008, 112 S.Ct. 646, 116 L.Ed.2d 663 (1991). The portions of the warrant limited to fruits and evidence of gambling are sufficiently particular; even though those portions do not contain a time limitation, their subject-matter limitation (fruits and evidence of gambling) fulfills the same function as a time limitation would have done, by limiting the warrant to evidence of the crimes described in the affidavit. 4 The portions of the warrant limited to fruits and evidence of bingo can be severed from the part of the warrant which is not so limited. Therefore, seizure of the documents pertaining to the gambling and the closely related money laundering charges was permissible.

In another argument related to the overbreadth issue, Ford and Hutchins argue that the search was invalid because federal agents “tagged along” with Louisville Police Department officers executing a state warrant. Citing United States v. Sanchez, 509 F.2d 886 (6th Cir.1975), Ford and Hutchins contend that the lack of a federal warrant invalidated the search. Sanchez does not prohibit federal officers *579 from being present during execution of a state warrant, see generally United States v. Searp, 586 F.2d 1117 (6th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 921, 99 S.Ct. 1247, 59 L.Ed.2d 474 (1979), but only prevents officers from using a warrant describing one kind of evidence as a pretext for searching for evidence outside the warrant. In Sanchez, officers had a warrant to search for narcotics evidence, when they learned that there was also probable cause to search for explosives at the same house. Rather than obtain a warrant to search for explosives, they simply used the narcotics warrant to search for explosives. Since the explosives were outside the scope of the warrant, Sanchez moved to suppress the fruits of the warrantless search for the explosives. The government then claimed the explosives were in plain view during execution of the narcotics warrant and therefore could be seized even though they were outside the warrant. We rejected the plain view argument, holding that the explosives search was actually a “distinct intrusion” from the narcotics search. 509 F.2d at 889. We held that seizure of property unrelated to what was described in the warrant was exactly the harm that the Fourth Amendment’s particularity clause was meant to prevent. Id. at 889-90. We therefore ordered the explosives suppressed. Id. at 890. We have just used similar reasoning to condemn the seizure of the Huber’s, Inc. documents under a warrant based on an affidavit about illegal gambling. Stipra at 575-78. However, in this case the gambling and money laundering documents were covered by the valid portions' of the warrant, which we have held are separable from the invalid portions. The government is making no attempt to excuse a warrantless seizure by a plain-view argument. The gambling documents were not seized under a warrant describing something else; they were seized by state officers under a state warrant describing gambling documents. Sanchez therefore provides no authority for suppressing them.

II.

Although we have already held that Ford’s tax conviction must be re-, versed because evidence was admitted in violation of the exclusionary rule, we will address issues that are likely to arise in the event of retrial of the tax case. Ford argues that the district court erred in the tax case by refusing to give the relianeeon-advice-of-accountant instruction Ford proffered. The district court refused the instruction because there was no evidence that Ford relied on his accountant in deciding not to report the $330,969.93 in his 1988 return.

A court’s refusal of a defendant’s proffered instruction is reversible if the instruction is a correct statement of the law, not otherwise covered in the court’s charge, and if the failure to give the instruction substantially impairs the defendant’s defense. United States v. Frost, 125 F.3d 346, 372 (6th Cir.1997), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 119 S.Ct. 40, 142 L.Ed.2d 32 (1998). A court should refuse a jury instruction if no evidence supports it, United States v. Lindo, 18 F.3d 353, 356 (6th Cir.1994), but even weak evidence will suffice. Frost, 125 F.3d at 372. A defendant is entitled to a reliance-on-advice instruction if he shows (1) he made full disclosure of all pertinent facts and (2) he relied in good faith on the advice. Lindo, 18 F.3d at 356. Specifically, we have held that a reliance-on-advice-of accountant instruction is warranted even without per se testimony that the defendant relied on the accountant’s advice, so long as the circumstances support an inference that he did so rely. United States v. Duncan, 850 F.2d 1104, 1115-19 (6th Cir.1988).

Ford argues that the accountant structured the transaction in which Ford sold the note to the accountant, and since Ford effected the transaction as the accountant planned, he necessarily relied on the accountant’s advice. Actually, Ford was simply convicted for failing to report the *580 $300,000, not for any other aspect of the transaction. The accountant testified that the plan as he formulated it was to delay Ford’s receipt of the $300,000, but to report the $300,000 as income when received. Ford’s failure to report the $300,000 was not part of the transaction planned by the accountant. The district court did not abuse its discretion in denying the reliance instruction.

III.

Ford argues that the district court in the tax case did not afford him his full rights to disclosure of jurors’ tax audit information under the former 26 U.S.C. § 6103(h)(5) (1994). 5 The district court ordered release of the venire list twelve days before trial so that Ford could request audit histories under the former section 6103(h)(5); Ford contends that this was not sufficiently in advance of trial to preserve his rights. To the contrary, the record shows that there was plenty of time for the IRS to supply the required information, which was made available four days after the release of the venire list and twelve days before jury selection. Under United States v. Spine, 945 F.2d 143, 148 (6th Cir.1991), a defendant was entitled to have the venire information disclosed in time to “permit the IRS to conduct a search of its records for potential jurors’ tax histories.” The time allowed in this case was sufficient for that purpose.

Ford also contends that the district court erred in limiting the IRS’s disclosure obligation to the last six years’ audit history. The district court supplemented the IRS information with a full voir dire on the subject of audit histories, and this satisfied Ford’s rights under section 6103(h)(5). See Spine,