Opinion ID: 778518
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Requirements for a Vulnerable Victim Enhancement

Text: 26 The first requirement under Iannone for imposing a vulnerable victim enhancement is that the victim be particularly susceptible or vulnerable to the criminal conduct. 184 F.3d at 220. Zats' victims, many of whom were poor, sick, facing personal emergencies, or all three, qualify. Victims can be vulnerable for the reasons listed in the application note — age, physical or mental condition — or simply because one is otherwise particularly susceptible to the criminal conduct. U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1, cmt. n. 2. Financial vulnerability is one way a victim can be otherwise particularly susceptible. See United States v. Arguedas, 86 F.3d 1054, 1058 (11th Cir.1996); United States v. Borst, 62 F.3d 43, 46-47 (2d Cir.1995). 27 The Second Circuit has stated that [t]he correct test [for vulnerability] calls for an examination of the individual victims' ability to avoid the crime rather than their vulnerability relative to other potential victims of the same crime. United States v. McCall, 174 F.3d 47, 51 (2d Cir. 1998). We agree with this standard. The issue in our case is whether an individual debtor's circumstances made Zats' improper debt collection methods particularly likely to succeed against him or her, not merely whether the debtor is more vulnerable than most debtors. There are some crimes to which almost no victims are particularly vulnerable. For example, few bank tellers are particularly vulnerable to bank robbery. There are other crimes, however, such as fraudulently marketing cancer remedies to cancer patients, to which many (if not most) victims may be particularly vulnerable. See id. 28 Our objective is to provide extra deterrence for defendants who are especially likely to succeed in their criminal activities because of the vulnerability of their prey. An extra dose of punishment removes the criminal's incentive to facilitate his crime by selecting victims against whom he actually will enjoy a high probability of success. At the same time, presumed vulnerabilities among broad classes of victims — such as an assumption that all elderly people are easily fooled — are disfavored as a basis for the enhancement because such presumptions are often incorrect with respect to specific individuals. See, e.g., id. at 50. Focusing the enhancement on group-based assumptions would permit criminals to reduce their sentencing exposure by victimizing individuals who do not belong to traditionally disadvantaged groups. Thus, we look to the individual vulnerabilities of the actual victims of the crime that occurred. 29 Many of Zats' victims were particularly vulnerable to his Scrooge-like practices because they could not afford to have their accounts frozen, even temporarily. Many were poor and lacked access to outside funds or support. Some were severely ill, which is not surprising because Zats specialized in collecting debts for doctors. And, given their responses to Zats, many of the debtors were completely ignorant of their legal rights. 30 As explained above, we review the District Court's factual determination that these victims were vulnerable only for clear error. The Court did not clearly err here. The record is replete with examples of highly vulnerable victims, and Zats has stipulated that the Government could prove the historical facts underlying those examples.
31 The second requirement is that the defendant knew or should have known of this susceptibility or vulnerability. Iannone, 184 F.3d at 220. Zats satisfies this requirement. He misleadingly argues that he did not target anyone because they were poor. Assuming that is true, although the evidence in the record shows otherwise, it is irrelevant. The Guidelines do not require that the defendant actually target his victims or otherwise seek them out because of their vulnerability. To the contrary, the Guidelines' commentary was amended in November 1995 to clarify that there is no targeting requirement. See Cruz, 106 F.3d at 1138; United States v. Paneras, 222 F.3d 406, 413 (7th Cir.2000). 4 What matters is not whether Zats wanted to exploit vulnerable victims, but whether he knew or should have known that he was doing so. 5 32 Zats had every reason to know of his victims' vulnerabilities. He knew that the debts he collected were mostly for medical treatment and that the debtors were therefore likely to be less resistant. Moreover, he knew that his high-pressure tactics worked best against debtors who were impoverished, facing family or health emergencies, and ignorant of their legal rights. Many of the people he pursued badly needed cash when he seized their accounts, and thus quickly yielded to his pressure. 33 Furthermore, Zats knew that at least some debtors were particularly vulnerable because they told him so. The Government's brief recounts case after case in which a debtor told Zats that she could not afford to have her account frozen even temporarily because she or one of her family members was seriously ill, handicapped, or facing a personal emergency. Zats invariably replied that he did not care and kept after the debtor until he or she appeared at his office with cash. His behavior leaves no doubt that he knew of his victims' particular vulnerabilities. 34 Moreover, the language knew or should have known  means that negligence is a sufficient level of culpability for a § 3A1.1 enhancement. A person acts negligently with respect to a material element of an offense when he should be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the material element exists or will result from his conduct. Model Penal Code § 2.02(2)(d). Unlike recklessness, which requires conscious disregard of a substantial risk of serious harm, negligence requires no actual awareness of the risk. See United States v. Trinidad-Aquino, 259 F.3d 1140, 1146 (9th Cir.2001); Model Penal Code § 2.02(2)(c), (d). Zats was at least negligent as to whether his victims were vulnerable. The record leaves no doubt that he should have been aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that many debtors paid him because they desperately needed access to their accounts and could not wait for legal help. He obviously knew that most had fallen behind on paying their medical bills, suggesting that they were both poor and sick. Moreover, Zats designed his methods to exploit their vulnerabilities. His extortionary tactics would be less likely to succeed against a debtor who had enough cash to sustain himself temporarily, who could rely on his family or friends, or who had a rudimentary knowledge of his legal rights. 35 Zats' brief suggests that he cannot receive a vulnerable victim enhancement unless he knew in advance about the particular vulnerabilities of the debtor from whom he was trying to collect. There is no such requirement. Nothing in the Guidelines requires that an offender have prior knowledge of his victim's vulnerabilities. The applicable guideline requires only that he knew or should have known. U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(1). That knowledge or notice could arise during the course of an ongoing offense such as fraud. Indeed, Zats' own brief cites an Eleventh Circuit case stating that even if [the defendant] did not initially know of [the victim's] vulnerability, he warrants a § 3A1.1 enhancement because he learned of the vulnerability during the course of the ... fraud and thereafter continued to perpetrate the fraud. Arguedas, 86 F.3d at 1058. 6 36 Finally, the Government need not prove that every, or even most, of Zats' victims were vulnerable or that he knew or should have known of the vulnerabilities in every case. The language of the guideline requires only that a victim of the offense was a vulnerable victim. U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1(b)(1) (emphasis added); see also United States v. Smith, 133 F.3d 737, 749 (10th Cir.1997) (A single vulnerable victim is sufficient to support application of the enhancement.). The examples we have mentioned much exceed this low threshold.
37 The third requirement is that the debtor's vulnerability or susceptibility facilitated the defendant's crime in some manner; that is, there was `a nexus between the victim's vulnerability and the crime's ultimate success.' Iannone, 184 F.3d at 220 (quoting Monostra, 125 F.3d at 190). Sometimes a victim's vulnerability makes him sympathetic but does not facilitate the crime. See Monostra, 125 F.3d at 191 (finding no indication that victim's visual impairment facilitated defendant's efforts to defraud banks). In this case, however, a clear causal connection exists. The debtors' particular vulnerabilities made it much more likely that Zats' heavy-handed methods would succeed. It is difficult to conceive that debtors with more financial resources, less urgent personal circumstances, or a better understanding of their rights would have agreed to his demands. In many cases, Zats collected from debtors who owed no debt or less than he claimed. In other cases, he apparently collected funds that were legally exempt from collection. Less vulnerable debtors might have refused to cooperate and in any event would have been better able to protect their rights. 38 Completing the causal chain, the ability to collect from vulnerable debtors allowed Zats to commit the crimes to which he pled guilty — defrauding the creditors who were his clients. Thus, the vulnerabilities that Zats exploited in the debtors sufficiently facilitated his offenses.