Opinion ID: 71480
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Harris's Case

Text: Citibank, N.A., (Citibank) hired Harris as a customer service representative in November 2002. In early March 2003, Harris began accessing Citibank customer accounts without authorization and providing Keasha Turner (Turner) with confidential credit card information. Turner then used this information to make fraudulent charges. Harris also falsely changed information in several customer accounts to indicate that replacement cards had been requested. She then had these replacement cards mailed to addresses where Turner retrieved them. Throughout March 2003, Harris removed blocks on the accounts that had been compromised and entered false bank verifications, enabling Turner's fraudulent charges to be processed even after they had been flagged as suspicious. On March 25, 2003, Citibank's internal fraud investigator confronted Harris about her irregular activities. Harris admitted her role in the fraud and said that her boyfriend had pressured her into helping Turner. She stated that she had not profited from the use of the fraudulent credit cards or from giving the information to Turner. Harris also stated that she had never made any of the fraudulent charges herself. She said that her boyfriend had told her that Turner planned to use the credit cards to purchase gift cards. Citibank later discovered that another one of its employees, Christianna Wright (Wright) was also providing Turner with customer account information. However, neither Harris nor Wright knew about the other's involvement with Turner. Harris compromised eight accounts before being caught, of which six sustained a total of $11,812.41 in fraudulent charges. [5] The eight accounts that were compromised had an aggregate credit limit of $89,770.00. Most of the fraudulent charges made on the cards added up to less than half of their respective limits. However, one account's credit limit was exceeded. That account had a credit limit of $500.00, and about $690.00 in charges were made. Most of the fraudulent charges made on each account were made on the same day, but there was one occasion on which successful charges were made to the same account on more than one day. On April 24, 2007, Harris was charged with one count of conspiring to commit bank fraud and one count of bank fraud. She waived indictment and pleaded guilty to bank fraud without a plea agreement. The conspiracy count was dismissed on the motion of the United States. Harris's Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) recommended that she be held accountable for $89,770.00, the aggregate credit limit of the eight accounts she had compromised, rather than the $11,812.41 in actual losses she had inflicted. This recommendation was made based on our holding in United States v. Sowels, 998 F.2d 249 (5th Cir. 1993), and language from the official commentary to the Sentencing Guidelines. USSG § 2B1.1 comment note 3(A)(i) (Nov. 2007) (providing that the loss inflicted by a defendant convicted of fraud is to be calculated as the greater of actual or intended loss). Harris objected to this loss calculation, arguing that Sowels did not support the use of the aggregate credit limit in her case. Harris renewed her objection at sentencing, but the district court overruled it and adopted the PSR. Based on the district court's calculations, the Sentencing Guidelines' recommended range for Harris's offense was fifteen to twenty-one months of imprisonment. The district court sentenced her to eighteen months and three years of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay a $100.00 special assessment and restitution in the amount of $11,812.41. If Harris's objection to the use of the aggregate credit limit had been sustained, and the loss she had inflicted had been calculated on the basis of the $11,812.41 in actual losses that she had inflicted, her recommended range would have been ten to sixteen months of imprisonment, and she would have been eligible for a split sentence. Harris timely filed a notice of appeal on November 24, 2008.