United States v. Caltabiano, 871 F.3d 210

In 2006 Caltabiano suffered an eye injury at work (left eye: severe permanent damage; right eye: subjective complaints without objective structural damage).
He filed for New York workers’ compensation and Social Security disability benefits claiming near-total blindness in both eyes; SSA and WCB awarded benefits based on those representations.
Surveillance and medical re-exams showed Caltabiano driving, shopping, and functioning in daylight; WCB terminated wage benefits and SSA later ceased disability benefits for continuing eligibility reasons.
In 2014 Caltabiano was indicted on conspiracy to commit mail fraud, five counts of mail fraud, and theft of government property; jury convicted on all counts; district court sentenced him primarily to 57 months’ imprisonment.
On appeal, Caltabiano used a multi-purpose USCA-2 Form A that identified an appeal from the judgment but elsewhere indicated the appeal concerned the sentence only; he also raised sufficiency, jury-instruction, and Guidelines loss-calculation challenges.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Appellate jurisdiction	N/A (Government) — Form indicates appeal from judgment	Caltabiano argued his form’s administrative box limited appeal to sentence only	Court: Rule 3 Section controls; administrative docketing boxes are non-jurisdictional; appellate review extends to conviction and sentence
Sufficiency of evidence for mail fraud	N/A (Government) — evidence shows ongoing misrepresentations and use of mail	Caltabiano: later mailings were after misrepresentations; no contemporaneous intent or materiality proven	Court: Evidence viewed favorably to Government suffices; mailings were incident to ongoing scheme and statements were material
Jury instruction on materiality & omissions	N/A (Government) — instructions were proper	Caltabiano: instruction injected a reasonable-person standard and court failed to instruct duty-to-disclose for omissions theory	Court: Caltabiano waived the objection to wording; omission/duty instruction not required because case proceeded on affirmative misrepresentations
Guidelines loss calculation	N/A (Government) — court’s intended-loss estimate appropriate	Caltabiano: district court miscalculated intended/actual loss and failed to give larger credit for worker’s comp amounts	Court: No plain error; court reasonably estimated intended loss, credited $64,000, and additional small credit wouldn’t alter Guidelines range

Smith v. Barry, 502 U.S. 244 (jurisdictional nature of Rule 3 requirements)
Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U.S. 312 (liberal construction of procedural rules to reach merits)
Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (mailing need only be incident to an essential part of scheme)
Pereira v. United States, 347 U.S. 1 (mailing element in fraud cases)
United States v. Binday, 804 F.3d 558 (materiality standard in fraud prosecutions)
United States v. Carboni, 204 F.3d 39 (review of factual findings underpinning sentencing credit disputes)
United States v. Giovanelli, 464 F.3d 346 (waiver by proposing jury charge language)
United States v. Pierce, 785 F.3d 832 (standards for reviewing sufficiency challenges)