Opinion ID: 801681
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Gowing’s sentence

Text: Gowing next argues that the district court erred in calculating his guideline sentence range by finding a greater loss than was properly attributable to him. His argument is in two parts. First, Gowing argues that the district court ignored part of the legal standard for loss. As Gowing notes, the loss calculation must be based on the amount which (1) was reasonably 4 foreseeable to the defendant and (2) falls within the scope of his agreement with his coconspirators. United States v. Studley, 47 F.3d 569, 573-75 (2d Cir. 1995). Gowing argues that the district court focused only on what was reasonably foreseeable and ignored the “scope of [his] particular agreement with the conspirators.” United States v. Garcia-Sanchez, 189 F.3d 1143, 1147 (9th Cir. 1999). But at the sentencing hearing, the district court expressly stated, “I think it is fairly clear that, from the evidence in this case, clearly from January 2004, Mr. Gowing . . . knew pretty much the details of the type of activity that Mr. Scheringer was involved in and that Mr. Gowing was agreeing to be involved in.” Particularly given that at the hearing, Gowing contested how much loss was foreseeable to him, but not the scope of the agreement, the court’s statement found that Gowing knowingly agreed to join the full scope of Scheringer’s scheme. The losses attributed to him thus fell within the scope of that agreement. Second, Gowing argues that the court erred in finding certain losses foreseeable to Gowing. Specifically, he argues that any amount of money collected by Jay Merkle and lost in the Scheringer scheme was not reasonably foreseeable to Gowing. The district court did not clearly err in finding to the contrary. At sentencing, the parties agreed that Gowing’s deep involvement in the scheme began in early 2004. The district court was entitled to infer that, by the time Gowing met Merkle at Scheringer’s residence in 2007, Gowing would have understood that someone spending a great deal of time in close contact with Scheringer and with access to Scheringer’s computer must be involved in the scheme. On this basis, the court properly found the loss reasonably foreseeable. “In reviewing findings for clear error, we are not allowed to second-guess the trial court’s choice between permissible competing inferences, because in that 5 case, the factfinder’s choice cannot be clearly erroneous.” Arch Ins. Co. v. Precision Stone, Inc., 584 F.3d 33, 39 (2d Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).