Opinion ID: 71480
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Harris's Control Over the Parties to the Conspiracy

Text: Harris's final argument is that, even if Alli is good law in this circuit, its holding is inapplicable to her case because the record reflects that she controlled the third parties whom she provided with credit card account information. If the assertion that she controlled her co-conspirators' actions were supported by the district court's findings of fact, the rule of Wimbish might be inapplicable to her case, since it then likely could not be shown that she had recklessly jeopardized the full credit limits of the cards she compromised. If reckless jeopardy could not be shown, then arguably her intended loss could only have been assessed as the aggregate limit if a finding were made that the intent or hope of the conspiracy had been to ultimately charge the cards to their limits. That may have been difficult to establish, given that Harris's co-conspirators did not charge most of the cards to their limits and usually did not make any charges on a card after the first day it was used. However, the record does not compel acceptance of Harris's assertion that she controlled the actions of her co-conspirators. In fact, the district court explicitly found that she had no control over the amount of charges other people made to the victim's [ sic ] accounts. This is a finding of fact, which we must review for clear error. See Cisneros-Gutierrez, 517 F.3d at 764. While Harris was able to remove obstacles to the processing of her co-conspirators' fraudulent charges, there is no indication in the record that she ever intervened to erase a fraudulent charge that she felt was too large, nor is there any indication that she even had the power to do so. In fact, when Harris's co-conspirators exceeded the limit of one of the cards, there is no indication in the record that Harris did anything about it. If she were truly the controlling figure in a conspiracy with an understood goal of never reaching the limits of any cards, this inaction would be difficult to explain. But we think this inaction makes sense, because the record supports the inference that Harris was little more than a pawn in Turner's conspiracy. Harris was pressured into helping Turner by her (Harris's) boyfriend. Harris's only knowledge of Turner's plan to purchase gift cards came through this boyfriend. Harris did not even know that there was another participant in the conspiracy, Christine Wright. Given these facts, we cannot conclude that the district court clearly erred in failing to find that Harris controlled the actions of the third parties to whom she gave the account information. That Harris's co-conspirators might have avoided overcharging the cards does not change this analysis. The question before us is whether or not the district court clearly erred in determining that Harris intended to inflict a loss of the credit limits of the cards. This determination was supported by the fact that Harris recklessly jeopardized this amount by transferring it to third parties whom she does not appear to have known or controlled. That the record might support a finding that these third parties never intended to inflict a loss of the credit limits does not excuse Harris's recklessness in giving the credit card information to them.