petitioner william campbell the key issue in this case is whether the government failed to meet its burden to prove that william campbell acted with the required intent to defraud to sustain conviction for wire fraud and misuse and access  e it's clear in this case that they did not meet that burden the charging documents allege or braun multi step scheme to defraud credit card holders first unknown indian named individuals stole credit card numbers stuck in those stolen credit card numbers were embossed on fake cards third those oldest cards were used to buy wal mart gift cards for those gift cards with a distributed to other individuals who then used those gift cards to buy products presumably those products were then resold to benefit the members of the scheme and the problem is that with respect to william campbell the government presented no competent evidence connecting campbell with steps one through four of that scheme or that he benefited in any way from this alleged scheme not only did he not participate in those actions but there's no evidence record that he was aware of them this is really far fetched for a jury to conclude that campbell was selling cigarettes to local convenience stores when it was behind thousands and thousands of cigarettes far too many for personal consumption and then was seen unloading them at a convenience store in chicago is it really so far from each i know you and i don't think it's far fetched for jury to conclude that campbell was gauged in the many cells cigarettes but that's not the scheme that's alleged here whether that business that he might have believed he was involved in which mr jeffries to resell cigarettes was done according to state regulation or not it's a the evidence presented at trial showed that camel participated in a series of legal actions he opened a stamp club membership using his valid driver's license he frequently shopped at a sam's club in addison illinois where he used wal mart gift cards to buy cigarettes and ball and in of themselves there's nothing illegal in these actions the question is one of intent and the government raises two key arguments that they believe were sufficient to show in first the odd nature of the transactions but campbell must have known something was that in support of this common sense argument the government in closing suggested he must have known there was no gift card fairy but just magically made these gi consider but in this case the quantity of the gift cards is equally as consistent with an inference that he was buying gift cards at a discount and then reselling cigarettes that rip off with those gift cards there's nothing from the quantity of the gift cards in of themselves so what way to manure you alleging a different crime i know your honor not what i'm saying here is that the the inferences that can be drawn from the behavior are consistent with a business operation and we have no evidence in the record whether though is that it was not campbell's duty either at trial or here on appeal to give an innocent inference for his actions the question is whether the government met their burden and if the case law in this court has indicated when the about how much a gift card how much money could be put on a gift card did it max out in a hundred and that's why they kept doing it ninety no there was no testimony about why the value of a ninety dollars just that it was ninety over and over again right ninety was the magic number i understand them but the twelve thousand cars just cracked i just wondered what was magical about ninety one there was some limitation but i don't know that it was anything magical about ninety dollars and like we needed  the second key argument raised by the government to support there to support that mr campbell must have acted with the requisite intent is his association with jeffrey i jefferies is referred to by the governments witness as a far further well but you know what i mean what you have here is an allegation of a scheme to defraud and why wouldn't the jury be entitled to hear cat and in this case the clear argument that the jury used to find intent was that the evidence presented suggests that mr jeffries has but intent and therefore mr campbell has as well and there are a couple of reasons why this is not cigarettes while standing next to each other you know different but wasn't there also evidence if they traveled together to chicago and together unloaded cigarettes into that co there was evidence of one one day shopping trip that was put forth that they came together to the store and then left as well and but the evidence on the record also shows that mr campbell bought cigarettes forty four times at sam's club and was only there with mr jeffries eight times they were clearly not acting together never quite only only so so less than one fifth of the times that he was purchasing cigarettes at sam's club no we're not suggesting that the two individuals did not know each other but the question is what is what mr campbell's knowledge was over the overall scheme to defraud and interactions that he had with mr jeffreys did not supply us with any more information other than that he was using gift cards to purchase cigarettes at sam's club now by contrast the evidence presented with respect to mr jeffries goes much further ten months after the end of the transactions that mr campbell was involved with a secret service agent executed invalid warrants and search mr jeffries residences at that time you found in a decent amount of evidence that was suggested suggestive of mr jeffries implication found in boston machines he found a laptop that allegedly contained e mails discussing credit card fraud he found western union receipts showing transfers of money from the united states to russia none of this evidence was connected with william campbell there's evidence no for the record that mr campbell was ever at mr jeffries residences there's no evidence that he participated in any of the western union activities and no evidence that a single email on that laptop had any connection to mr campbell further a special agent but scotty testified that the reason he was from milieu with mr jeffries was that he had interviewed him after several other arrests clearly portraying to the jury that this is a bad guy the clear implication an inference the jury then drew was that mr campbell's association with jefferies who clear who seemed to have the requisite intent supplied that for mr campbell now the problem here is the repeated beats that the jury has to me to find this intent of course circumstantial evidence can provide evidence of intent we can't get in any defendant's mind but there must be more than mere speculation has to be a sell gift cards at a discount those could be bought in bulk then rebuy cigarettes at a store that also provides a discount for bulk and then resell them thank you thank you mr chewer please the court balls are if the united states government absolutely introduced sufficient evidence to prove the defend and one campbell skill in this case and if the defendant continues to misuse that's why i thought it was that the defendant's role was in this case the defendant's role was the downstream person responsible for effectively mon converting to cash these gift cards that the other coast demers in the case attained through the fraud and he did that by buying huge quantities of cigarettes with his coast geoffrey's and together delivering those cigarettes to a convenient store and sufficient evidence absolutely prove the defendant's knowing participation in the scheme as runners noted there was testimony in walmart records and videos establishing that the defendant repeatedly over a seven month period went to the see what does that have to do with anything i cannot for the life of me figure out why it matters if he went to the same one or if he went to ten different ones  understand one of the the argument that's being presented to this court here is very different than the argument that was presented in the court below the argument that mr campbell presented in the court below is one of identity he was arguing almost entirely  in the court below that all mr conceding the existence of a scheme but that he was not the person who is committing the scheme and so all this evidence that came in regarding where he was shopping he the government was introducing it and using it to show that he was trying to distance himself from being the person who actually was involved in the crime what is your best evidence that campbell had knowledge that the gift cards were purchased with stolen credit cards the best evidence of that three pieces of evidence your honor one is the twenty minute video that the jury saw from december seventh two thousand and ten i believe it was when jefferson campbell unloading were actually several things even before the unloading were at the sales counter together at that addison store buying cigarettes and it's not just the two of them independently there that they are interacting with each other nonstop during that video and you can see each other sharing gift cards you're right there's also wal mart and sam's club records that show that the timing the second piece of evidence showed the timing of the use of the gift cards as compared to severely the purchase of those gift cards so focusing on december seventh the government argued in closing that all these gift cards were used within a day or two of their purchase i went back in preparation for this argument and looked at the purchase of the gift cards used by campbell and jeffries on december seventh with one section for campbell they were all purchased in the afternoon late into the evening the night before on december sixth just than the night before so within twelve hours of their purchase campbell is at the sam's club store using gift cards so no time for  will excuse me i jeffries used additional of those same set of cards that same day on december seventh when he and campbell are at the store as seen on the video so that's the evidence regarding the nature of the relationship between the two i mean was there evidence of their interactions other than the fact that they went to sam's club club to get sort of your honor i the it's more than just the mere fact that they were there the eight times that the video again and i come back to again and again it does show a very close relationship between the two it doesn't show t independent buyers acting independently acting as if they don't actually know each other they are there together and the videos also show them drive to the store together walk through the store together put the cigarettes that they've jointly purchased th same shopping cart and exit the store together then unload those cigarettes from the shopping cart into the same car and drive away together we also have the testimony and photographic evidence from the wal mart investigator who conducted surveillance on that car after they left on december seventh and show them together unloading those cigarettes at the store so when when you have that day in detail and you combine that with the other seven instances that they were together and you combine that  the fact that both of these individuals were committing the same conduct again and again and again over the exact same period of time there was a strong difference that the jury could reach about their their relationship about how closely they work together is it is it think government's contention that this is sort of an unsuccessful the ostrich defense by campbell in other words could a reasonable person be given a hundred and one thousand dollars worth of gift cards and not understand that they were not from the legitimate source and that therefore he had t intent you know to defraud no because again that's just one piece of the evidence it to be sure that is an important piece of the government's evidence it's one hundred thousand one dollars of cigarette purchases over a very short period of time seven months it's repeated trips to the same sam's club store and i do bring you back at this point to the question you asked about why it matters he's going on the staley's to sam's club and he's essentially wasting all this time driving way out twenty miles east each direction when there are several much closer options for him to frequent i know so it's i know you drive miles and miles to some outlet store five days a week absolutely but there aren't similar or identical outlet stores closer to their homes and that's the significant piece that was how do we know what this jury near their home well we know what was near the home in this case government exhibit map one showed exactly where mr campbell resided it is it is that use it's not just twelve hundred gift cards it's not it's also the fact that it is over a thousand gift cards valued at exactly ninety dollars your honor judge williams you asked earlier about the significance of the ninety dollars we didn't introduce that this trial but we did have some evidence for some of the other co defendants in this case about exactly where that ninety dollars came from there was talk among the organization that hundred dollars or more in a gift card actually thought that jeffrey's was going to testify against campbell and he chose a relative of the last minute not to and in fact it was so late in the day that he chose not to if you take a look at the docket he actually pled guilty after the trial so everyone assumed he was going to plead guilty and in fact he did but that way there was a whole issue surrounding whether or not jeffrey's would testify this is where i guess i'm the i know we're subject to the pla error standard of review for on the testimony about the search of jeffrey's home but i've got to say i'm troubled by it just because of the the long time to lay it was one of the but ten months  after mr campbell's last purchase the that was part of the evidence it just seems to me like that information would be awfully stale at that point in an attempt to link it to to campbell you know i actually i think the nature of what was fact eight or so was that evidence or that was the evidence i didn't see anything though in the testimony about that point that linked it to the relevant time periods but what does link it is sam's club and wal mart records shown for jeffrey's use of credit card counterfeit credit cards and these gift cards that shows that he was using these this if he was getting these cards and using gift cards in the exact same way that campbell was at a time from before when campbell started through a time after campbell finished and up to that time right around the time when the search was executed and this is a quip in your honor and evidence that isn't of the kind that it's not drug evidence where it's not a package of narcotics where the nature of the item you would expect not to be there for very long well but it's certainly easy to imagine the jeffries could have been involved with  shifting cast of characters and that's that's why the long time delay just seems troubling to me obviously no objection was made and the trial and none of these things were fleshed out as they might have been and quite but i'll  just note my concerns were that seems like a stretch to me sure and i understand your concern i also point out that it was far from the most compelling piece of evidence that the government would put in and we are operating under a plain error standard that is not plain the other evidence even absent the existence of that piece of evidence would still have allowed the jury to reach a guilty verdict in this case and in other words that shouldn't be the thing that ultimately requires  must not have been committing a fraud if he thought if you got this membership that was argued to be nonsense because it was necessary for him to be able to shop at sam's club and commit this fraud that he that he get this membership i d the reality is this scheme was occurring in the stores much broader than sam's club and wal mart and the young raveling of this organization came because they were doing exactly this they used their memberships at sam's club in the way that nothing presented to the holders of the cards to suggest that they knew that their cards their credit cards were being fraudulently misused or b the identity of the people who were you miss using those cards in other words they conceal these defendants including mr campbell conceal their identities from the actual victims of this case and made no effort to identify themselves to the actual victims of this case the fact that they were using a standard club membership i just simply don't think that they thought through the fact that there would be records that would come out of this connecting their use to going to their membership like you but i ask you one factual question how much does sam's club sell a case of cigarettes for and how big is the case i know that's in the record i can't remember offhand i know it was the testimony of ms i got konnie i believe a case i believe is something like forty cartons or maybe twenty cartons maybe half that you can see it in the government exhibit i'm sorry documentary three sixty nine dash three contains still images of that video that i keep talking about and the video is itself and the record and if you look at that that documentary you can actually see the cases in the cartons they filled one or two shopping carts on that one day along with it what's can collectively some seven thousand dollars worth of cigarettes they filled one to two shopping clothes shopping curtis thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes absolutely in today's cigarette market no bearing on whether the government needs to prove intent and here the details that were presented show that the way mr campbell got his stamps come membership using a valid id the fact that he went to the same location forty four times one can certainly imagine that if someone were trying to hide a large volume of purchases it would make a lot more sense to go into the area sam's clubs so that this wouldn't be quite as apparent in fact other of the alleged in the original indictments allegedly opened at their sam's club membership with fake i d s showing again a disconnect between mr campbell and the other members the alleged scheme to that it's irrelevant whether the gift purchased only night or the day before because there's no evidence in the record that mr campbell had any purchase a patient or any knowledge of their purchase the only thing we can see from the record is the evidence of mr campbell you using the gift cards now the government has suggested that they had a lot of evidence about the other members of the alleged kospi of the life scheme and that's very clear from the way the case was presented at trial but what there isn't evidence is campbell's knowledge of the other schemers and what his intent was in fact we see that he's in a very different place from the other alleged members of the scheme unlike mr jeffries whose behavior in transactions continue over a very long period for whom evidence was found in his home and seized none of that evidence connects with mr campbell further the original indictment shows that expensive cars a motorcycle things were seized as forfeiture proceedings as part of th none of that is suggested of mr campbell this this raises our third argument on appeal as well of the problem of the difference between the indictment that was presented to the jury and the evidence as to mr campbell a trial now the indictment presented a full roadmap of this robust scheme where coast steamers allegedly stolen credit card numbers then purchased gift cards and then used them to resell but mr campbell using the government's own terms was the downstream player in this and the question here is what he knew about what was going on upstream and there's no evidence in the record that lets us infer that he had knowledge of the fraudulent nature of the scheme in fact not aware of the need to conceal his identity the very fact that there was a separate purchaser not the person who bought the kit car bought the gift cards in the first place but to have to take another person into the scheme to buy the cigarettes suggests that there's a disconnect between the core members of the scheme and mr campbell for all these reasons the evidence presented at trial does not did not allow a reasonable jury to find that the government had met its burden to prove that specific and well you certainly did it for a job for your client and the government always does a great job for its client so thank you