Opinion ID: 2673094
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Trial and the Initial Sentencing1

Text: Between February 2004 and November 2005, appellants participated in a scheme to defraud four banks— Commerce Bank, Wachovia Bank, M&T Bank, and PNC Bank—out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although appellants each had individual responsibilities in the scheme, they worked together to steal the personal identification information of account holders at the four banks. Checkrunners, sometimes using false identification cards provided by appellants, would then pose as those account holders and withdraw money from their accounts, at times doing so by cashing counterfeit or closed-account checks. On July 26, 2006, appellants and six co-defendants were charged with various offenses in a 22-count indictment. Following trial, appellants were each convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. They were also convicted of one or more substantive counts of bank fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344, and multiple counts of aggravated identity theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A. The District Court sentenced appellants at separate hearings between September and December 2008, applying to all of them several offense-level enhancements pursuant to the Sentencing Guidelines. One was a four-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(2) for an offense involving at least fifty victims. Various within-Guidelines sentences of imprisonment were thereafter imposed, as well as terms of supervised release, special assessments, and orders of restitution. As relevant here, Smith was ordered to pay restitution of $68,452. 1 Facts regarding the underlying offense conduct are taken from United States v. Norman, 465 F. App’x 110 (3d Cir. 2012), in which we resolved the issues appellants raised on direct appeal. 4