Opinion ID: 778518
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Particular vulnerability

Text: 26 The first requirement under Iannone for imposing a vulnerable victim enhancement is that the victim be particularly susceptible or vulnerable to the criminal conduct. 184 F.3d at 220. Zats' victims, many of whom were poor, sick, facing personal emergencies, or all three, qualify. Victims can be vulnerable for the reasons listed in the application note — age, physical or mental condition — or simply because one is otherwise particularly susceptible to the criminal conduct. U.S.S.G. § 3A1.1, cmt. n. 2. Financial vulnerability is one way a victim can be otherwise particularly susceptible. See United States v. Arguedas, 86 F.3d 1054, 1058 (11th Cir.1996); United States v. Borst, 62 F.3d 43, 46-47 (2d Cir.1995). 27 The Second Circuit has stated that [t]he correct test [for vulnerability] calls for an examination of the individual victims' ability to avoid the crime rather than their vulnerability relative to other potential victims of the same crime. United States v. McCall, 174 F.3d 47, 51 (2d Cir. 1998). We agree with this standard. The issue in our case is whether an individual debtor's circumstances made Zats' improper debt collection methods particularly likely to succeed against him or her, not merely whether the debtor is more vulnerable than most debtors. There are some crimes to which almost no victims are particularly vulnerable. For example, few bank tellers are particularly vulnerable to bank robbery. There are other crimes, however, such as fraudulently marketing cancer remedies to cancer patients, to which many (if not most) victims may be particularly vulnerable. See id. 28 Our objective is to provide extra deterrence for defendants who are especially likely to succeed in their criminal activities because of the vulnerability of their prey. An extra dose of punishment removes the criminal's incentive to facilitate his crime by selecting victims against whom he actually will enjoy a high probability of success. At the same time, presumed vulnerabilities among broad classes of victims — such as an assumption that all elderly people are easily fooled — are disfavored as a basis for the enhancement because such presumptions are often incorrect with respect to specific individuals. See, e.g., id. at 50. Focusing the enhancement on group-based assumptions would permit criminals to reduce their sentencing exposure by victimizing individuals who do not belong to traditionally disadvantaged groups. Thus, we look to the individual vulnerabilities of the actual victims of the crime that occurred. 29 Many of Zats' victims were particularly vulnerable to his Scrooge-like practices because they could not afford to have their accounts frozen, even temporarily. Many were poor and lacked access to outside funds or support. Some were severely ill, which is not surprising because Zats specialized in collecting debts for doctors. And, given their responses to Zats, many of the debtors were completely ignorant of their legal rights. 30 As explained above, we review the District Court's factual determination that these victims were vulnerable only for clear error. The Court did not clearly err here. The record is replete with examples of highly vulnerable victims, and Zats has stipulated that the Government could prove the historical facts underlying those examples.