hi please be seated everyone good morning runners twenty four money on behalf of mr stratus you want to i'm going to begin talking about why the sentence in this case is substantively on reasonable and then try to work back and defrauding someone by by giving them false hopes and pretenses to a group of people who had absolutely no control over their money so you look at that conduct in of of itself your honor that conduct although i'm not going to sit here and try to justify it i don't think he deserves i think much he as much a sentence that he's gotten just for that you know for that  alone and then you talk about the facebook frog which is when he goes and deals with this other gentleman mr ken burns a mystic ken burns the financial advisor that educated human being he knows what's going on he nevertheless that's not really the issue is it you want to add i'm not going to you know it's hard to swallow what happened here because there was absolutely no defense presented on behalf of mr stratton he pled guilty  free of constitution error we had a trial he had a trial where the but we're here on and sentencing yes short of but but nothing in this appeal has to do with anything about the factual guilt findings either by plea or conviction nothing we can do at this what do you think a reasonable sentence would be an education your honor i think it reasonable sentence in this case would have been if you shave off the four point it has meant for the substantial financial harm and then you give him fourteen years which would be the high end the four point enhanced meant let's talk about that because the court reference specifically the fact that he had sat through the trial had heard ample evidence in this case on the losses and then he referenced the victim impact statements and some of them were quite powerful talking about the fact that they had to delay their retirement and that it cost them substantial financial hardship so where's the air in applying that for love these victims so the judge found that ten burns's testimony was credible in in the sense that it was foreseeable to mr stratus these victims would have been foreseeable to mrs wright is what the victim's statement short of would never subject to cross examination what was subject to cross examination who was subject to cross examination as ken burns anybody'd says it to my clients are these wealthy individuals these don't think it was just the burns testimony alone the court said he's telling barnes how to deal with the investors that he'd already cheated so the testimony with that was hard to calm makes it clear the harm to those investors was reasonably foreseeable and i think he also referenced like some i think it they were jailhouse calls as well are you disputing the are you saying that there's insufficient evidence that it was recently forseeable is your argument of financial hardship and i don't think see these victims or statements were never subject to cross examination is i lost fifty thousand dollars of you know money that i would have put away that i was going to put away for my granddaughter to go to college  how much money this person have because fifty thousand dollars could be you know someone's got five million dollars may not be significantly you know it may not be a substantial harm was there a pre sentence report in this case there was was it made available to your the record that these victims suffered substantial financial harm when the when when the gentlemen when the person who knew it is the victims that's which with ken burns comes in testifies in court says these were victims who had lots of money these were people who had lots of money these weren't just your general people public you know where somebody is taking in their you know ira account and cashing it out and say i'm going to go and invest in facebook you know these were people who ha substantial sums of money according to mr burns who had the judge credit by ok so dusty just the troubling factor here on her because we don't have any other than just pure high written statements by these people who lost money in the facebook fraud we don't have any idea of what percentage of their entire income or what percentage of their savings was that was deforest the ability because mr strout is never met any of these victims ever interacted with he only interact with ken burns who one of the people that ten burns brought to invest in the face  a hedge fund so you know he never knew any of these people this is stratus so there was a question as to whether or not he was in a foreseeable for him to know that was going to be fifty plus victims when beth invested money  where defense counsel began that's where i would begin as well the fraud comes from two very brazen schemes and what's important to realize about this case is that because at the time that he was conducting a facebook facebook scheme he was using under an alias made a reputable law firm using his alias he had actually arranged telephone calls with facebook executive he made this look particularly legitimate now while it is true that the the eleven million dollars fraud scheme related to miss murphy had a different modus operandi he was not in a business relationship with her but active as her financial advisor he managed to dissipate her assets in less than six months so the idea that mr tyler you are correct no objection was made to whether or not the victims in this case had experienced a substantial financial hardship indeed in the briefing and it argued it defense counsel conceded that the victims were financially ruined and that the scheme in the facebook scheme had caused the undoing of their entire financial lives this is a fifty four was in one of the victims of the face stock scam we can call it that trusts a number of them as well as individuals there's a total of fifty six dollars victims listed there if one of them is a hedge fund however it makes no difference here because the number of individuals who claimed financial substantial financial hardship exceeds five you could start with nicole murphy who testified we actually spoke at the sentencing hearing about how mr status had ruined her life she had lost cars a home the ability to support her parents in a scheme her mother actually lost her home and her credit was severely damaged is the government's argument if there's five or more victims it doesn't matter what the particular financial hardship was to each of them no your honor that there actually needs to be a substantial financial  and the court had more hear the victims actually identified the nature of the harms that they suffered in addition to miss murphy for example there was victim c for who lost one hundred thousand dollars in this scheme and he  indicated in his statement that he was actually going to have to put off retirement this is one of the non exhaustive lists in the application notes as an example of a substantial financial harm  victim to gratis who lost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the scheme also identified the fact that he was going to have to delay retirement other victims like that some homewood who lost one hundred and ten thousand dollars become chronic the seven thousand dollars who lost seventy three thousand dollars they identify the fact that this had depleted or substantially harmed their children's education accounts for example victim chrono she stated that he was going to have to go into his retirement account to replenish those funds and was going to incur fees and tax consequences depletion of education accounts is one of the non exhaustive list in the application notes of what can be substantial financial harm so in this case the district court had very specific examples and it noted that in its and it sense in hearing that it was looking toward looking into the type of harm the loss of education accounts delays delayed advised him of the things that he could say to put off his client's telling him at that point that the facebook scheme was in fact going to lead to fate of facebook shares eventually but if he really wanted his money schemes at issue here so those losses were counted for purposes of calculation of the guideline range or for restitution purposes on the guideline range i know there was a lot of discussion at the sentencing hearing regarding because the judge did not consider that loss but even so it still got to a guideline range that that resulted in a two hundred and sixty two month sentence so even if you only count the twenty two million dollars that the if there were no questions or any there was no argument concerning the abuse a position of trust in hansford however if the court has any questions about that i'm happy to address it other than that if the court has no additional questions for me the court to affirm the sentence looks like we have no additional questions thank you counsel thank you not only that eleven million dollars that he got initially but he was going to get another eleven a half one million dollars for making the connections through is he was he was hopeful that is able to accomplish that and then finally i think you're just hawkins asked about whether or much counsel both sides for your argument in this case the matter is submitted for decision