Opinion ID: 3160112
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Guilty Pleas and Sentences

Text: In 2002, Michael Sellers hired Keskemety to set up and run a telemarketing boiler room in Florida to solicit investments in the two Dolphin movies. Keskemety would pay for the boiler-room expenses, including buying his own lead lists and paying the telemarketers. Sellers would pay Keskemety 25 to 40 percent of the money raised in the Florida boiler room. Keskemety began running the boiler room in 2004, soliciting investments first for the Eye of the Dolphin, then for the Way of the Dolphin. The telemarketers made their solicitation calls using lead lists Keskemety purchased from Craft. Keskemety managed the Florida boiler room from 2004 to 2009. During this period, the telemarketers raised approximately $2 million from victims who invested in making and marketing the two Dolphin films. Lloyd worked as Cinamour’s boiler-room manager from 2003 to 2007. Among other things, Lloyd recruited telemarketers and helped prepare scripts that closers used to get signed investment contracts and checks. In 2007, Sellers hired Lloyd to set up and run a boiler room in Los Angeles to sell partnership units in Sellers’s Dolphin films. Unlike his arrangement with Keskemety in Florida, Sellers paid the overhead for the Los Angeles–based boiler room that Lloyd managed. Lloyd convinced many of the telemarketers who worked with him at Cinamour as closers, including Allen Agler, to join him and do the same kind of telemarketing solicitation for Sellers’s Dolphin films that they had been doing for Cinamour. From 2007 to 2009, the California and Florida boiler rooms together sold partnership units in the Dolphin movies UNITED STATES V. LLOYD 15 to 264 victims, raising $9.3 million. Keskemety contends that his Florida boiler room raised $1.5 to $2 million of this amount. There is no controverting information. Based on this, Lloyd’s California boiler room raised approximately $7.3 million. The number of victims attributable to each location is unclear. The June 2011 indictment arising from the Dolphin movies, United States v. Lloyd, et al., No. 11-cr-542, charged Keskemety with conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371, two counts of mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341, and offering and selling unregistered securities under 15 U.S.C. §§ 77e and 77x and aiding and abetting under 18 U.S.C. § 2.1 On March 2, 2012, Keskemety pleaded guilty without a plea agreement to one count of mail fraud. The same indictment charged Lloyd with one count of conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371, seven counts of mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341, seven counts of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343, eight counts of offering and selling (or aiding and abetting the offer and sale of) an unregistered security under 15 U.S.C. §§ 77e and 77x and 18 U.S.C. § 2, and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from illegal activity under 18 U.S.C. § 1957. Lloyd was also named in United States v. Toll, et al., No. 11cr-543, arising from the Cinamour film telemarketing. This indictment charged Lloyd with one count of conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. § 371, four counts of mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1341, four counts of wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. § 1343, 1 The indictment also charged Craft for his role at American Information Strategies and Agler, Jady Laurence Herrmann, Joseph McCarthy, Matthew Bryan Wellman-Mackin, Morabito, and Robert Ramirez for their roles as closers. 16 UNITED STATES V. LLOYD three counts of offering and selling (or aiding and abetting the offer and sale of) an unregistered security under 15 U.S.C. §§ 77e and 77x and 18 U.S.C. § 2, and one count of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from illegal activity under 18 U.S.C. § 1957.2 In February 2012, Lloyd pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in United States v. Lloyd; in April 2012, he pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in United States v. Toll. The two actions were consolidated for sentencing. Neither Keskemety nor Lloyd appeals his conviction. Both appeal their sentences. Keskemety received an 80-month prison sentence, well below the 121 to 151 month Guidelines range, and was ordered to pay $8,628,733.93 in restitution. The offense level and restitution amount were based on the victims’ losses in both the Florida boiler room Keskemety managed between 2004 and 2009 and the Los Angeles boiler room Lloyd managed between 2007 and 2009. Keskemety agrees that he is properly held accountable for the fraud losses from the Florida boiler room while he worked there, but he challenges including the Los Angeles boilerroom fraud losses in his relevant conduct. Lloyd received a 156-month sentence and had to pay $22,258,489.04 in restitution. He challenges the sentence 2 The indictment also charged Daniel Toll for his role as Cinamour’s president; Joel Lee Craft, Jr. for his role as head of American Information Strategies, which supplied Cinamour with telemarketers, sales materials, telephone scripts, private placement memoranda, and lists of prospects to cold-call; and Bart Douglas Slanaker, Allen Bruce Agler, Delitha Floyd, Brian Emmanuel Ellis, Daniel Morabito, and Daryl Van Snowden, who were closers. UNITED STATES V. LLOYD 17 length as both procedurally flawed and substantively unreasonable.