United States v. Linda Sadr ( 2012 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-4693
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
LINDA LEA SADR,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Virginia, at Alexandria. Liam O’Grady, District
Judge. (1:10-cr-00437-LO-1)
Submitted: January 27, 2012 Decided: February 14, 2012
Before KING, KEENAN, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Michael S. Nachmanoff, Federal Public Defender, Kevin Brehm,
Assistant Federal Public Defender, Caroline S. Platt, Appellate
Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellant. Neil H.
MacBride, United States Attorney, Marla B. Tusk, Assistant
United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Linda Lea Sadr pled guilty to two counts of mail
fraud, 18 U.S.C.A. §§ 1341, 2 (West Supp. 2011); four counts of
wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 2 (2006); and two counts of money
laundering in a transaction exceeding $10,000, in violation of
18 U.S.C. §§ 1957, 2 (2006). She received a sentence of 144
months’ imprisonment. Sadr appeals her sentence, contending
that the district court clearly erred in making a four-level
adjustment for an offense involving a large number of vulnerable
victims, U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 3A1.1(b) (2010),
and a two-level enhancement for use of sophisticated means, see
U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(9)(C). We affirm.
We review a sentence for reasonableness under an abuse
of discretion standard. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51
(2007), which requires consideration of both the procedural and
substantive reasonableness of a sentence. Id.; see United
States v. Lynn, 592 F.3d 572, 575 (4th Cir. 2010). We first
review the sentence for significant procedural error, including
whether the district court properly calculated the defendant’s
Guidelines range, treated the Guidelines as advisory, considered
the 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors, analyzed any arguments
presented by the parties, and sufficiently explained the
selected sentence. Gall, 552 U.S. at 51. If there are no
significant procedural errors, we consider the substantive
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reasonableness of the sentence, taking into account the totality
of the circumstances. United States v. Mendoza-Mendoza, 597
F.3d 212, 216-17 (4th Cir. 2010).
Sadr worked in the real estate business in northern
Virginia for a number of years. She worked as a loan officer
for several mortgage companies and also operated a series of her
own companies, through which she represented that she could help
homeowners quickly eliminate their home mortgages by means of
her “mortgage elimination” or “mortgage challenge” program. Her
program was premised on the idea that lenders funding refinance
loans were operating illegally and could be sued, thereby
forcing them to release mortgages in full. Sadr also offered
to invest her clients’ money, promising a high rate of return.
None of these promises were kept, although Sadr paid off a few
of her clients’ mortgages, leading them to believe that they had
successfully completed her program. These clients then helped
her recruit others into her scheme. Many of her clients lost
their homes to foreclosure and lost the money they invested with
her.
Guidelines section 3A1.1(b) provides a two-level
adjustment under subsection (b)(1), which applies “[i]f the
defendant knew or should have known that a victim of the offense
was a vulnerable victim,” and an additional two-level increase
under subsection (b)(2), which applies if the offense involved a
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large number of vulnerable victims. Before making the
adjustment, the court must first determine that a victim was
“unusually vulnerable due to age, physical or mental condition,
or . . . otherwise particularly susceptible to the criminal
conduct.” USSG § 3A1.1 cmt. n.2; see United States v. Llamas,
599 F.3d 381, 388 (4th Cir. 2010). The court must also find
that the defendant knew or should have known of the victim’s
unusual vulnerability. * Id. Because the court’s determination
is factual, it is reviewed for clear error. Id.Sadr argues that the government failed to show that
any of the fraud victims were unusually vulnerable or
particularly susceptible to her criminal scheme. Thus, she
contends that the government failed to show that she knew or
should have known of her victims’ unusual vulnerability or
susceptibility, and that the government failed to show that the
offense involved a large number of vulnerable victims.
However, the record reveals that many of Sadr’s
victims were immigrants who spoke no English or were not
entirely fluent in English, and two significant emails she sent
*
The adjustment currently does not require that the
defendant have targeted the victim specifically because of his
vulnerability, although before the 1995 amendment to § 3A1.1,
Application Note 2 stated that the adjustment “applies to
offenses where an unusually vulnerable victim is made a target
of criminal activity by the defendant.” See app. C, amend. 521.
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suggested that she preferred such clients. We conclude that the
evidence before the district court was sufficient to support a
finding by a preponderance of the evidence that the enhancement
applied, and that the district court did not clearly err in
applying it. Llamas and the commentary to § 3A1.1(b)(2) do not
require that all victims be unusually vulnerable or susceptible
to the fraud, only that a large number of them qualify. In this
case, a lack of familiarity with “non-conversational English”
disadvantaged many of Sadr’s victims by making them less able to
understand the suspicious nature of Sadr’s sales pitch or the
program she proposed to them.
Section 2B1.1(b)(9)(C) of the Guidelines provides for
a two-level enhancement to a defendant’s offense level if “the
offense . . . involved sophisticated means.” The enhancement
applies when a defendant employs “especially complex or
especially intricate offense conduct pertaining to the execution
or concealment of an offense.” U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1 cmt. n.8(B).
Examples of sophisticated means include “hiding assets or
transactions, or both, through the use of fictitious entities,
corporate shells, or offshore financial accounts.” Id. A
defendant’s offense of conviction may involve “sophisticated
means” even if not every aspect of his scheme was complex or
intricate. United States v. Edelmann, 458 F.3d 791, 816
(8th Cir. 2006); see also United States v. Weiss, 630 F.3d 1263,
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1279 (10th Cir. 2010) (“The Guidelines do not require every step
of the defendant’s scheme to be particularly sophisticated;
rather, as made clear by the Guidelines’ commentary, the
enhancement applies when the execution or concealment of a
scheme, viewed as a whole, is especially complex or especially
intricate.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States
v. Ghertler, 605 F.3d 1256, 1267 (11th Cir. 2010) (no
requirement that defendant’s individual actions be
sophisticated).
Sadr contends that hers was a garden-variety mortgage
fraud in which she used companies and accounts that were all
openly linked to her and to addresses where she could be
reached. However, Sadr created a variety of businesses,
including her own title company, which she used to cover the
fact that her victims’ mortgages were not in the process of
being eliminated, as she promised, and that the fees she
collected were simply being used to make mortgage payments for
other participants. When Sadr stopped making mortgage payments,
she created Property Logistics, Inc., falsely claimed that it
had bought another of her companies, Maximum Impact, and that
Property Logistics, Inc. was slowing the processing of payments.
After the mortgage payments stopped and participants began
receiving foreclosure notices, the participants were unable to
locate Sadr because none of her companies occupied a physical
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space and she had stopped answering emails. We conclude that
application of the enhancement in her case was not clearly
erroneous.
We therefore affirm the sentence imposed by the
district court. We dispense with oral argument because the
facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the
materials before the court and argument would not aid the
decisional process.
AFFIRMED
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