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Parties Involved:
United States of America
Appellee
Bryce Woods
Appellant

Document Text:

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 15‐1495

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff‐Appellee,

v.

BRYCE WOODS,

Defendant‐Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 11 CR 595‐2 — Virginia M. Kendall, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 18, 2015— DECIDED DECEMBER 23, 2015

____________________

Before POSNER, MANION, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The defendant was found guilty of

multiple counts of health care fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1347, and

Judge Kendall sentenced him to 70 months in prison (a

shade under six years). His appeal argues only that he

should be resentenced because the judge did not address one

of his arguments for a lighter sentence—that after commit‐

ting the fraud he landed an honest job and performed it in

Case: 15-1495 Document: 32 Filed: 12/23/2015 Pages: 5
2 No. 15‐1495   

exemplary fashion, demonstrating that he has been rehabili‐

tated.

The fraud was the brainchild of a pair of companies (both

run by the same doctor) for which the defendant worked.

The companies purported to provide psychological services

to residents of nursing homes. The boss of the enterprise di‐

rected the defendant, who had significant administrative du‐

ties, to file almost 34,000 claims for Medicare reimbursement

for services that either were not provided at all or did not

comply with Medicare requirements for reimbursement. The

defendant, although not a psychologist, conducted some of

the phony treatment sessions himself; others were conduct‐

ed by unqualified graduate students. Had the claims of Med‐

icare reimbursement been paid in full, the government

would have been out almost $3.5 million between 2006 and

2011; as it was, the government paid the fraudulent enter‐

prise only $1.5 million. Judge Kendall correctly calculated a

guidelines range for the defendant of 70 to 87 months, and

the sentence she imposed was thus at the bottom of the

range.

The fraud ended in 2011 when the scheme was discov‐

ered; two years later the defendant started work for a com‐

pany called American Leaders, Ltd., which provides leader‐

ship training for business executives and is a subsidiary of

Fleming Group. His supervisor, a vice president of Ameri‐

can Leaders, wrote a letter submitted at the sentencing hear‐

ing praising the defendant as an exemplary employee and

saying that the defendant had been offered management po‐

sitions in several of the company’s overseas offices, though

of course he couldn’t exercise any of these options because

of his prosecution and conviction, of which the employer

Case: 15-1495 Document: 32 Filed: 12/23/2015 Pages: 5
No. 15‐1495 3

was aware. What his duties were at American Leaders is

somewhat unclear; according to his lawyer “he set[] up

meetings for persons who are trying to become better in

business.”

The defendant’s lawyer pressed the rehabilitation argu‐

ment at the sentencing hearing and the judge questioned

him about it, so she unquestionably was aware of it; but she

rejected it without explanation as a ground for giving the

defendant a below‐guidelines sentence. Ordinarily a crimi‐

nal defendant’s nonfrivolous argument for leniency requires

discussion by the sentencing judge, United States v. Hodge,

729 F.3d 717, 723–24 (7th Cir. 2013), but the argument of the

defendant in this case bordered on the frivolous. It is too pat

for a person convicted of a substantial business fraud to ask

for leniency on the ground that after the fraud ended he

went to work for a business that (we can assume) does not

engage in fraud. What would one expect him to do? He

landed the job within two months of his conviction, and in

the year and a half that followed (he remained free on bail

until he was sentenced in February 2015) unsurprisingly es‐

chewed (so far as anyone knows) fraudulent activity. That

tells a judge nothing about what business opportunities the

defendant might seek upon completion of a shorter prison

sentence than she was minded to impose; he might seek op‐

portunities that would enable him to engage in fraud again,

fraud being an activity in which he had a good deal of expe‐

rience.

If a defendant convicted of dangerous criminal activity

such as operating a drug stash house goes straight after be‐

ing released from prison in middle age there is a fair likeli‐

hood that he will remain straight because the type of crimi‐

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4 No. 15‐1495   

nal activity that he had engaged in is a young man’s game.

United States v. Poke, 793 F.3d 759, 760–61 (7th Cir. 2015);

United States v. Presley, 790 F.3d 699, 701–03 (7th Cir. 2015).

But there is little basis for confidence that a businessman will

eschew fraud when he re‐enters the job market after com‐

pleting his prison sentence. Fraud isn’t the type of crime one

ages out of, because it does not involve physical danger. So,

for example, Jeffery T. Ulmer & Darrell Steffensmeier, in

their chapter, “The Age and Crime Relationship: Social Vari‐

ation, Social Explanations,” in The Nature Versus Biosocial De‐

bate in Criminology: On the Origins of Criminal Behavior and

Criminality 377, 386–87 (Kevin Beaver et al., eds., 2014), place

fraud among “offenses with flatter age curves,” which “are

often those for which the structure of illegitimate opportuni‐

ties increases rather than disappears with age.”

The fact that a defendant convicted of fraud is able to se‐

cure a lawful job while on bail is thus not a persuasive rea‐

son for giving him a below‐guidelines sentence; it does not

prove rehabilitation; and so clear is this that the sentencing

judge is not to be faulted for failing to explain why it isn’t a

compelling reason for dipping below the bottom of the ap‐

plicable guidelines range. According to the presentence re‐

port, the defendant’s annual earnings when employed by

American Leaders were not quite $22,000, and if his criminal

record keeps his earnings depressed when he is released

from prison he may be tempted to try his hand at fraud

again, and may succumb to the temptation.  

Since the defendant’s employment argument borders on

the frivolous, the sentencing judge was entitled to ignore it,

and to focus as she did on the other, more substantial argu‐

ments that the defendant made for leniency, having to do

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No. 15‐1495 5

with the extent of his participation in the conspiracy and his

lack of any other criminal history. The judge also discussed

at length the details of the offense and the defendant’s fami‐

ly background. We are confident that she imposed an ap‐

propriately individuated sentence.

AFFIRMED

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