the women sometimes white people sometimes people of color sometimes as u s citizens and sometimes as for the nationals and then they would wait they would wait for somebody to see their profiles and they would start out as these things do on the web site by messaging back and forth and first of all if somebody wanted to meet in person they would cut him off immediately that wasn't going to work but as messages would go back and forth sometimes they would my clients would see or my clients would see profiles that they sent messages to and started other interactions with some subset of these personal relationships would develop victim issue well what it shows your honor is that they weren't looking as the district court found for people who had deteriorated mentally because of age what they were looking for is people who had money and that would respond quickly when one of these calamities arise would arise and i think the district court's error was to conflate the consequences of this well he's not bound by the guidelines he doesn't have to calculate them as you have to stick to but the fact is that he did and he didn't create a parallel just cation to the sentence that can lea this court with the firm conviction that he would have given the same sort of same kind or the same sentence anyway and that's what he had to do not i do have to do anything but well yeah look he can have his own concept of a vulnerable victim he has to calculate the guideline doesn't have to give a sentence within the guidelines range and if he decides he obviously feels very strongly that these are vulnerable victims and even if his his understanding of the term doesn't match that of the sentencing commission he can still give this sentence yes he ca but he has to first calculate the guidelines range correctly now and here he did and he found that they were his finding that they were vulnerable because of age is erroneous and clearly so there was no that made the fraud more we don't have to have mental deterioration in order to be a vulnerable victim these people are very upset by what happened and ups being upset is different after that i don't understand why you they didn't just ask for the money that the development of the relationship speaks to thinking out the vulnerable individual right but that's true of any fraud that's what they're and they talk about unusual long barely it's like being having terminal cancer or being you know something not like a bank teller where it's just your job and there's just more of a risk age under this court's precedent in the united states versus sems those findings just were not clearly iranians miserere e middle that she was targeting vulnerable people she admitted and the court found that the scheme target older people some of the profiles were actually posted on websites specifically for people over fifty senior people meet that come our time back and then from the larger pool of victims who responded to the fake profiles she concentrated on those that she and michael a jokey determined to be vulnerable in her post arrest interview which is right in the pre sentence report and you're asked this question a riri emitted that michael a jokey had her quote concentrate on talking to people that were vulnerable who just wanted someone to listen to them i think it's really important that the scheme itself in this case required of teenie biographical and financial information mystery was keenly aware of the ages of people she was keenly aware of the financial impact that her scam was having on them as they want a lot in fact knowing the financial positions of the victim was necessary to further the fraud when want to ask that of a victim was depleted there was another story to get the next asset and i on and on  systematically draining these people people's assets leaving many of them not only roll but also only money and then due to their ages a lot of them don't have it most i think don't have a meaningful ability to recoup the losses these the harm done to the victims although the vulnerable victim enhanced men did give some bump in the guideline range that would account for the fact that they targeted these people and then the harm to them that really in terms of the play numbers he just didn't think it was enough that it is the conduct under thirty five fifty three i was so agree janice that the guidelines just simply did not address the seriousness is right the court did not come right out and say i would give the same sentence if it wasn't you know even if i wouldn't have imposed the vulnerable victim and hanson but the court's continual reference to the thirty five fifty three a factors the courts referenced twice to the fact of the court felt like although it had to consider the guidelines what it wanted to do was really that he the court wanted to reflect its mandate to do justice and th thought that this was the sentence that best reflected justice for the victims but also for missouri and for all these reasons your honor last the court has any questions we would ask you to affirm ok thank you m if you turn to pages twenty six to twenty nine of the appendix that is the part of the transcript where the seventy one year old victim in this case gives her victim impact statement it was palm in the courtroom and certainly drove this sentence and i would submit to the court that somebody who writes that articulately shows that amount of awareness shows that amount of insight and intelligence and sophistication is not somebody that you could call a vulnerable or an unusually vulnerable victim the government absurd words can't even describe the devastation deep hurt i feel as a result of your criminal people don't say things like that in public unless they are suffering of course and nobody is denying their suffering which was profound beyond my front financial devastation i have numerous other emotional mental and physical problems physical problems a result of this trauma my loss of dignity my sense of hopelessness my inability to trust sleep deprivation shame guilt fear chronic depression extreme set stress and thoughts of suicide now do you think that's normal or do you think people who react so greatly so vulnerable just feeble minded people are crazy people or what it does i would submit to the court that the vulnerable victim enhanced but doesn't apply or excuse me isn't the analysis is an art of what the effect was it's whether that demand no because you infer the condition of the person from the effect if the effect is much greater than on the average person you say will listen to have reacted w person because not everybody reacts in that fashion the average person i don't think would talk that way they feel you know they've been a sucker  we don't dispute that but anybody no matter how badly they've behaved deserves a fairly calculated and correctly calculated guideline marriage but the judge doesn't have to give a guideline sentence that's correct what's the statutory maximum for this i believe it was twenty years well maybe if we reversed that's what she'd get the life that obviously we would not