In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________

No. 07-4040

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

MARIETTA SQUIBB,

Defendant-Appellant.

____________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division.

No. 3:06cr0086(02) RM—Robert L. Miller, Jr., Chief Judge.

____________

ARGUED JUNE 11, 2008—DECIDED JULY 17, 2008

____________

Before MANION, ROVNER, and TINDER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. A jury found Marietta Squibb guilty of

committing mail and wire fraud, and of conspiring to

defraud the United States. The district court sentenced

her to ninety-six months’ imprisonment. On appeal she

argues that the government presented insufficient evidence to show her knowledge of the conspiracy, and thus,

she contends, her convictions should be overturned.

Sufficient evidence supported the jury’s verdicts; therefore, we affirm.
2 No. 07-4040

1 From here on, we refer to Thomas and Marietta Squibb by

their first names for the sake of clarity.

I. Background

The facts are recounted in the light most favorable to

the government. See United States v. Kelly, 519 F.3d 355,

362 (7th Cir. 2008). Marietta Squibb and her husband,

Thomas, were a well-to-do couple who lived in

Mishawaka, Indiana. The Squibbs were respected members of their community, and Thomas1

 had a reputation

for being shrewd with investments. Beginning in 1995

Thomas solicited money from individuals to develop two

“projects”: campgrounds in various cities in Michigan and

condominiums in Naples, Florida. Each investor was told

that only eight or nine others were helping with the

enterprise; in fact, over the course of the scheme the

Squibbs took in nearly 200 investors, from whom they

received roughly $15 million.

Contrary to what they told the investors, the Squibbs

did not build campgrounds or condominiums with the

money, but instead used it for personal benefit. Thomas

and Marietta issued promissory notes to the investors

and when the time came for them to send interest checks,

the Squibbs used the money received from later investors

to pay off the earlier investors. The operation ran

smoothly at first, but after several of the Squibbs’ interest

checks bounced, one investor became suspicious, researched the campground’s corporate office, and discovered that company representatives had never heard of

the Squibbs. By this time the Securities and Exchange

Commission (SEC) had also gotten wind of the scheme, and

it ultimately unraveled in early 2006.
No. 07-4040 3

In July 2006, Thomas and Marietta were each indicted

on one count of conspiring to defraud the United States, see

18 U.S.C. § 371, four counts of mail fraud, see 18 U.S.C.

§ 1341, and thirteen counts of wire fraud, see 18 U.S.C.

§ 1343.

In May 2007 the Squibbs were tried by a jury. The

government called as witnesses more than twenty

victims of the Ponzi scheme, and several of them testified

to Marietta’s involvement. According to one witness,

she sent all of her correspondence to the Squibbs through

certified mail and Marietta signed for that mail. Marietta

also signed several promissory notes and financial statements. Thomas reassured that victim that in case of an

emergency, Marietta knew “how to take care of things.”

And when the interest payments from the Squibbs were

tardy, the witness primarily contacted Marietta.

Another witness, who invested $300,000 with the

Squibbs, testified that he became concerned after his

first interest check bounced in October 2005. The victim

had had difficulty contacting Thomas, and Marietta

informed him that Thomas had injured his head while

playing basketball. Consequently, Marietta said that she

was “taking over” the investment program in Thomas’s

absence. According to the witness, Marietta reassured

him that he would be paid. Marietta also told him that

she would call him back after she determined in which

property he had invested. By this time, the witness

said, he was highly perturbed and expressed his concerns to Marietta, but she reiterated that “nobody was

going to lose their money.” Marietta asserted that she

had previously traveled to the campgrounds, and she

verified that the development was underway.

Another witness testified that he invested $75,000 but

received only one interest payment. When he called to try
4 No. 07-4040

and recover the rest of his money, Marietta told him that

“there was some discrepancy in the contracts and signatures . . . but it would all be straightened out.” The witness described Marietta as “very, very knowledgeable”

about the operation and said that her manner of speaking

was “very authoritative.”

Marietta also took the stand. She testified that Thomas

did not explain his business ventures to her and, although

her signature was on several of the promissory notes,

she maintained that her signature had been forged.

Marietta admitted that she tried to convince several

investors that they would be paid when Thomas sustained the head injury, but, she said, she did so only at

Thomas’s direction. But on cross-examination Marietta

conceded that she had filled out several of the promissory

notes and had signed for certified mail that was sent

from the investors. Additionally, Marietta acknowledged

that she balanced several joint checking accounts and

that some of those accounts contained money from the

investors. The government also highlighted several transactions between Thomas’s business account and Marietta’s

personal account that Marietta could not explain.

At the close of trial, the jury found Marietta guilty on

seventeen of the twenty counts with which she was

charged. Thomas was convicted on all counts. Marietta

was sentenced to ninety-six months’ imprisonment,

which she does not challenge on appeal.

II. Analysis

Marietta contends that the jury’s verdicts should be

set aside because it was not presented with enough evi-
No. 07-4040 5

dence to support its finding that she was an active participant in the scheme. As a general matter, defendants

“challenging the sufficiency of the evidence face a high

burden.” See United States v. Martinez, 518 F.3d 505, 509

(7th Cir. 2008). We ordinarily would uphold the jury’s

finding so long as “any rational trier of fact could have

found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Seymour, 519 F.3d 700, 714

(7th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks and citation

omitted); see United States v. Hatten-Lubick, 525 F.3d 575,

579 (7th Cir. 2008). But in this case Marietta did not move

for a judgment of acquittal under Rule 29 of the Federal

Rules of Criminal Procedure after the jury returned its

verdicts; therefore, we review her claim for plain error. See

United States v. Miller, 405 F.3d 551, 556 (7th Cir. 2005);

cf. Hatten-Lubick, 525 F.3d at 579. “Under this most demanding standard, reversal is warranted only ‘if the record is devoid of evidence pointing to guilt, or if the evidence on a key element was so tenuous that a conviction would be shocking.’ ” United States v. Allen, 390 F.3d

944, 948 (7th Cir. 2004) (quoting United States v. Taylor,

226 F.3d 593, 597-98 (7th Cir. 2000)).

Focusing solely on the conspiracy charge, Marietta argues

that the government did not prove that she knew that her

husband’s enterprise was fraudulent. But many witnesses

testified that Thomas told them that Marietta was capable

of running the operation in his stead and that she actually

did so while Thomas was incapacitated. Other witnesses

described telephone conversations with Marietta where she

reassured them in an “authoritative” manner that they

would be paid. Marietta also signed promissory notes and

financial statements, balanced the checking accounts, kept

track of correspondence to the Squibbs, and regularly

answered the investors’ questions. Marietta testified that
6 No. 07-4040

she acted only at her husband’s bidding, but the jury was

entitled to credit the victims’ testimony that she played an

active role in the scheme. See United States v. Bowman, 353

F.3d 546, 552 (7th Cir. 2003).

In similar cases involving a conspiracy between

spouses, we have upheld the finder of fact’s determination of the scope of each spouse’s involvement in the

conspiracy. For instance in United States v. Zaccagnino,

467 F.3d 1044 (7th Cir. 2006), a husband and wife were

indicted on several counts related to an investment

scheme. Id. at 1044. The wife pleaded guilty to three of the

charges, but at sentencing she argued that she initially

did not know that the scheme was fraudulent and thus

should not be held accountable for the total loss amount.

Id. at 1046. In that case we noted that the finder of fact

specifically chose not to credit her version of events, and

we concluded that it did not err in doing so. Id. at 1048;

see generally United States v. Gunning, 984 F.3d 1476, 1481

(7th Cir. 1993) (upholding jury’s finding that wife knowingly joined conspiracy where she traveled with husband

to crime scene carrying handgun). In this case, Marietta

similarly asks us to reweigh the evidence on appeal, which

we will not do. See United States v. Moore, 425 F.3d 1061,

1072 (7th Cir. 2005); United States v. Carter, 410 F.3d 942,

953 (7th Cir. 2005). The jury found that Marietta knowingly participated in the conspiracy and nothing in the

record permits us to overturn that determination. See

United States v. de Soto, 885 F.2d 354, 366-67 (7th Cir. 1989).

The record is not devoid of evidence of Marietta’s guilt,

and her convictions are not “shocking.” We therefore

AFFIRM the convictions.

USCA-02-C-0072—7-17-08