UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Aрpellee, v. MALIK DELIMA, Defendant, Appellant.
No. 17-1132
United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit
March 26, 2018
Before Lynch, Circuit Judge, Souter, Associate Justice, and Kayatta, Circuit Judge.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE [Hon. George Z. Singal, U.S. District Judge]
Michael J. Conley, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Halsey B. Frank, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.
*
Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
I. Background
A. Facts
In 2014, federal law enforcement agents in Vermont began an investigation into a drug trafficking organization that transported cocaine and heroin from New York to Vermont and Maine. As part of that investigation, the agents applied for and obtained three separatе wiretap authorizations from the district court in Vermont. The wiretaps targeted four phones used by Gary Delima and other members of the drug trafficking group. Each of the three wiretap applications was supported by affidavits, on personal knowledge, from Drug Enforcement Administration agent Timothy Hoffmann, who participated in the investigation. Through the wiretaps, the agents learned that Gary Delima and his brother Malik Delima (“Delima“), the defendant in this case, were at the center
On March 24, 2015, lаw enforcement agents executed a search warrant at the apartment of one of Malik Delima‘s associates in Auburn, Maine. They recovered various equipment used to manufacture fraudulent credit cards, including a laptop computer, a credit-card-embossing machine (a “tipper“), a credit card laminator, a magnetic-strip card reader, approximately 210 prepaid gift cards, and approximately 150 credit and debit cards. They also seized a laptop that contained text files with hundreds of stolen credit card numbers. In total, 2,326 unique crеdit, debit, and gift card numbers were seized from the physical cards, the laptop‘s files, and email accounts associated with the laptop.
B. Presentencing Proceedings
Malik Delima moved to suppress all evidence obtained through the wiretaps on the ground that the government had failed to demonstrate necessity. The district court denied the request on June 21, 2016.
On July 22, 2016, Delima pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit access-device offenses in violation of
The probation office filed a presentence investigation report (“PSR“), which stated that Delima, along with his brother Gary, orchestrated the credit card scheme. It referred to phone calls showing that the two brothers oversaw nine other individuals who assisted in the execution of the scheme. The PSR also noted that, based on the 2,326 card numbers recovered from the seizure, and the formula specified in
The PSR calculated Delima‘s base offense level to be six. It then recommended a fourteen-level enhancement because the estimated loss was more than $550,000 and less than $1,500,000, pursuant to
Because Delima had a number of prior convictions, the PSR calculated that he had a criminal history category (“CHC“) of IV. Based on a TOL of twenty-five and a CHC of IV, the applicable guideline range was 84-105 months. The PSR adjusted the range to 84-90 months because there was a statutory cap of ninety months’ incarceration. See
C. Loss-Amount Hearing and Sentencing Hearing
The district court held an evidentiary hearing to determine the loss amount on December 22, 2016. Delima and two of his codefendants were present at the hearing. At the outset, the government introduced, and the district court admitted without objection, a spreadsheet of the fraudulent credit card numbers that the government contended was a “conservative estimate” of the numbers attributable to the defendants, a summary narrative chronology, a transcript of jail calls, and transcripts of the wiretapped calls.
The government then called Secret Service Agent Matthew Fasulo to testify. Fasulo, who joined the Delima investigation in
Fasulo explained that, based on his review of the transcripts of the wiretapped calls, he believed that the scope of the criminal scheme extended beyond Maine to several other states, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. Fasulo discussed a number of the wiretapped calls in depth, including a call in which Delima instructed Gary to order 100 unique credit card numbers for $1,500; a call showing that Delima and his coconspirators had been ordering card numbers even before they had moved their operation tо Maine; several calls in which Delima discussed recruiting women to make purchases with the fraudulent credit cards; a call in which Delima recommended Plattsburgh, New York as an attractive place to make purchases; and a call in which Delima advised Gary on where to test the fraudulent cards.
On cross-examination, Fasulo testified that there was no evidence directly tying the files found on the seized laptop to
The sentencing hearing took place on February 1, 2017. After hearing from the parties, the court addressed the two disputed issues: the loss amount and the role enhancement.
With respect to the loss amount, the district court noted that Delima had “agreed to be part of the entire process” of the conspiracy, pointing to defense counsel‘s own concessions that Delima “knew what was planned, knew how it would be done, knew when it would be done, . . . and knew the people who were going to do it.” As such, the district court attributed “the 1,025 card[ numbers] that were found . . . in the [March 2015] raid” to Delima.3 The court also found that a “minimum of 75” additional cards were attributable to Delima, “based on his operations in
With respect to the role enhancement, the district court acknowledged that Delima had “a considerable role in the offense,” but ultimately decided to give him a three-level role enhancement as a “manager and supervisor” of the scheme, rather than a four-level enhancement as an organizer or leadеr. As a result of the court‘s findings on the two enhancements and the acceptance-of-responsibility reduction, Delima‘s total offense level was twenty-four. Combined with a CHC of III,4 the applicable sentencing range was 63-78 months.
The district court ultimately imposed a seventy-five-month sentence. In doing so, the court emphasized the interstate, “broad-ranging” nature of the conspiracy; Delima‘s role as a “central character” in the scheme; his “troubled criminal history;” his involvement in the conspiracy within months of
II. Discussion
On appeal, Delima challenges the district court‘s denial of his motion to suppress the wiretap evidence, as well as its decision to impose the fourteen-level loss enhancement and the three-level role enhancement. Delima also alleges that the district court‘s seventy-five-month sentence was substantively unreasonable.
A. Denial of Motion to Suppress Wiretap Evidence
Under
We have upheld wiretap applications supported by affidavits that “explain[] why the continued use of traditional investigative techniques (such as confidential sources, grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, surveillance and consensual monitoring) would be ineffective in uncovering the full scope of the potential crimes under investigation.” United States v. Villarman-Oviedo, 325 F.3d 1, 10 (1st Cir. 2003). We have also approved of affidavits in which “agents assert a well-founded belief that the techniques already employed during the course of the investigation had failed to establish the identity of conspirators, sources of drug supply, or the location of drug proceeds.” Rodrigues, 850 F.3d at 10.
The affidavits supporting all three of the wiretap applications clearly set forth the goals of the investigation, which were to (1) identify the conspiracy‘s leaders; (2) ascertain
The December 22, 2014 affidavit adequately stated why each of the ten traditional investigative techniques that had been employed up to that point would have been ineffective in achieving the goals of the investigation. For example, the affidavit stated that the use of confidential informants would have been fruitless because the informants were low-level “runners” who did not have access to information pertinent to the investigation‘s goals; that controlled drug purchases and pole cameras would not help to identify the leaders of the conspiracy; and that interviewing members of the conspiracy might compromise the investigation by alerting the suspects.
Like the December 22, 2014 affidavit, the February 3, 2015 affidavit properly described why additiоnal wiretaps were needed to accomplish the investigation‘s goals and why traditional
At oral argument, defense counsel contended that even if the first two wiretaps were necessary, the third wiretap was not, because the agents already had a solid case against the Vermont drug traffickers by the time they applied for that wiretap. We disagree. Like the February 3, 2015 affidavit, the affidavit supporting the February 23, 2015 wiretap application provided updated reasons as to why new wiretaps were necessary and why traditional investigative techniques were still unlikely to be effective. Importantly, the February 23, 2015 affidavit articulated why the newly requested wirеtap would provide the agents with information “beyond what was acquired through the
In short, each of the three affidavits provided facts that were “minimally adequate” to support the wiretap authorizations. Santana, 342 F.3d at 65 (quoting López, 300 F.3d at 53).
B. Sentencing Challenges
We review the district court‘s sentencing decisions, apart from claimed errors of law, for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Clogston, 662 F.3d 588, 590 (1st Cir. 2011). We engage in a two-part analysis: “we first determine whether the sentence imposed is procedurally reasonable and then determine whether it is substantively rеasonable.” Id.
A district court‘s sentencing decision is procedurally unreasonable if the district court “fail[s] to calculate (or
Delima alleges that the district court committed procedural error by imposing a fourteen-level loss enhancement and a three-level role enhancement. He also asserts that his seventy-five-month sentence is substantively unreasonable because a downward variance was warranted. We reject these arguments for the following reasons.
1. Loss Enhancement
Under
It is clear from the record that the district court focused on intended losses and rejected Delima‘s argument that actual losses should be used. Delima‘s actual-loss argument ignores the fact that, under
Our next task is to determine the extent of the loss the conspiracy intendеd to cause. The government bears the burden of proving the amount of intended loss by a preponderance of the evidence. See United States v. Alli, 444 F.3d 34, 38 (1st Cir. 2006). “[D]eference is owed” to the loss determination of the district court, which “need only make a reasonable estimate of the loss,” because the district court “is in a unique position to assess the evidence and estimate the loss based on that evidence.” United States v. Sharapka, 526 F.3d 58, 61 (1st Cir. 2008) (quoting
Defendants who engage in a “jointly undertaken criminal activity” are responsible for (1) losses that are “directly attributable” to them, and for (2) losses that result from “reasonably fоreseeable acts committed by others in furtherance of the jointly undertaken criminal activity.” United States v. Pizarro-Berrios, 448 F.3d 1, 8 (1st Cir. 2006). The sentencing court must first “ascertain what activity fell within the scope of
The district court properly found that Delimа had agreed to be “an integral member” of a conspiracy to procure misappropriated credit card numbers, produce fraudulent credit cards, and use the fraudulent cards to transact with merchants. There was also ample evidence for the district court to conclude that Delima was aware of even the “smallest detail[s]” of the conspiracy. Wiretapped conversations revealed that Delima had funded and profited from the conspiracy, had been aware of the role of each actor in the conspiracy, and had understood the minute operational details of the conspiracy, including the appropriate size of card-number orders and how to effectively test the fraudulent credit cards. As such, the district court reasonably found that all 1,025 of the credit card numbers procured by the conspiracy in March 2015 were foreseeable to Delima. See LaCroix, 28 F.3d at 229 (holding that “a defendant‘s awareness of the inner workings of a conspiracy in which he is participating . . . frequently will suffice to prove the defendant‘s ability to foresee the acts of coconspirators“).
The government conceded at oral argument that the district court was required to attribute at least seventy-six, not seventy-five, additional card numbers to Delima in order to apply the fourteen-level enhancement under
Delima also argues that some of the card numbers recovered from the March 2015 search may have been fabricated. Not only is there a complete lack of evidence to support this assertion, but the district court also reasonably relied оn affirmative evidence of the card numbers’ genuineness. That evidence included the fact that the conspirators repeatedly purchased the numbers from the same source without complaint, and the fact that the affected banks checked approximately half of the recovered numbers and confirmed that all of those numbers were associated with real accounts. The district court reasonably
2. Role Enhancement
We review the district court‘s determination that Dеlima was a “manager or supervisor” of the conspiracy for clear error. United States v. Garcia-Hernandez, 659 F.3d 108, 114 (1st Cir. 2011).
Delima does not challenge the district court‘s finding that the conspiracy involved five or more participants. His challenge focuses instead on the extent of Delima‘s authority over other participants in the conspiracy.
Despite Delima‘s attempts to downplay his role, the district court had sufficient evidence to find that Delima exercised significant authority over his coconspirators.
3. Substantive Reasonableness of the Seventy-Five-Month Sentence
Finally, Dеlima challenges his seventy-five-month sentence on substantive reasonableness grounds. Because that sentence is within the Guidelines range, Delima “bears the ‘heavy burden’ of marshaling ‘fairly powerful mitigating reasons and persuad[ing] us that the district judge was unreasonable.‘” United States v. Carpenter, 781 F.3d 599, 622 (1st Cir. 2015) (quoting United States v. Madera-Ortiz, 637 F.3d 26, 30 (1st Cir. 2011)).
Delima makes the unpersuasive argument that he should have been granted a downward variance because of the disparity between the actual losses caused by the conspiracy and the foreseeable losses attributed to him. As we noted above, the district court‘s reasonable calculation of the loss amount properly focused on intended -- not just actual -- losses
Moreover, the district court identified several aggravating factors that justified imposing a sentence at the high end of the Guidelines range: the conspiracy was “broad-ranging” and crossed state lines; Delima had been convicted of a number of crimes in the past, including robbery and counterfeiting currency; Delima dove right into the credit card scheme just months after the conclusion of his supervised-release term; the conspiracy caused significant, “far-ranging” harm to Maine residents, including banks, credit card holders, and merchants; and the conspiracy “was only stopped fortuitously” by the March 2015 apartment raid. These factors provided the district court with “a plausible sentencing rationale,” which it used to arrive at a “defensible result.” Reyes-Rivera, 812 F.3d at 89 (quoting Martin, 520 F.3d at 96). Delima‘s sentence was not substantively unreasonable.
III. Conclusion
Delima‘s conviction and sentence are affirmed.
