Opinion ID: 783805
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sophisticated Means Adjustment

Text: 10 The Appellant challenges on several somewhat related grounds the two-level enhancement of his offense level for employing sophisticated means to accomplish his offense conduct. U.S.S.G. § 2F1.1(b)(5)(C). First, he contends that the offense conduct was simply not sophisticated in any sense of the word. He argues that the specific acts of his criminal activity, while admittedly fraudulent, were each individually no more intricate than a game of Three-Card Monte. However, even if each step in the scheme was not elaborate, the total scheme was sophisticated in the way all the steps were linked together so that Jackson could perceive and exploit different vulnerabilities in different systems in a coordinated way. See United States v. Lewis, 93 F.3d 1075, 1083 (2d Cir.1996) (holding, in tax case, that sophisticated means enhancement applied even when each step in the planned tax evasion was simple, [because] when viewed together, the steps comprised a plan more complex than merely filling out a false tax return). 11 Second, the Appellant argues that something more than cleverness is required in order to be sophisticated in the sense intended by section 2F1.1(b)(5)(C). The conduct, he contends, must involve inside information, special technology, corporate shells, offshore bank accounts, or something similar. Brief for Appellant at 22. The latter two examples are drawn from Application Note 15 to section 2F1.1. But the same note also provides the example of a telemarketing operation that locates its main office in one jurisdiction but conducts operations in another, not an especially elaborate scheme. Jackson's use of hotels and courier services to take delivery of fraudulently obtained goods, his use of prepaid phone cards to prevent tracking of his activities, and his manipulations of victims' credit lines and billing addresses combine to indicate that the enhancement was merited. 12 Third, the Appellant contends that section 2F1.1(b)(5)(C) is not concerned with all sophisticated conduct, but principally [with] a defendant's efforts to evade detection. Brief for Appellant at 16. Application Note 15 to section 2F1.1 indicates otherwise, as it expressly defines sophisticated means to include conduct pertaining to the execution or concealment of an offense (emphasis added). 13 Giving due deference to the District Judge's application of the Guidelines to the facts of the case, see 18 U.S.C. § 3742(e); United States v. Berg, 250 F.3d 139, 142 (2d Cir.2001), we are satisfied that the Judge was entitled to conclude that the requisite degree of sophistication was involved to merit the two-level enhancement.