Opinion ID: 6348939
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admission of Screenshots

Text: Defendant challenges the admission of screenshots of customer reviews left on his Pharma-Master website that were taken by Robin Biundo, an intelligence analyst with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Biundo became involved in Defendant’s case through her investigation of a potential drug operation in Oregon. 6 The term fentanyl appears twice in the Controlled Substances Act: the initial (and now superseded) controlled-substance schedules, see 21 U.S.C. § 812(c), Schedule II(b)(6), and a section on production and procurement quotas for controlled substances, see id. § 826(i). 7 The initial controlled-substance schedules were established by statute. See 21 U.S.C. § 812(c). The Attorney General may by rule add substances to the schedules, remove them, or transfer them between schedules. See id. § 811(a). As permitted by statute, see id. § 871(a), the Attorney General has delegated this scheduling authority to the Drug Enforcement Administration, see 28 C.F.R. § 0.100(b); see generally Touby v. United States, 500 U.S. 160, 162–63, 169 (1991). 15 Appellate Case: 20-4116 Document: 010110695524 Date Filed: 06/10/2022 Page: 16 As part of this investigation, Biundo used an undercover account on AlphaBay to monitor drug transactions. Through AlphaBay, Biundo was able to view buyer feedback left for the Pharma-Master storefront controlled by Defendant and connect certain feedback to her target in Oregon. Biundo took screenshots of 366 pages of feedback left on Pharma-Master’s storefront. The screenshots capture what appear to be customer reviews for several thousand transactions involving Pharma-Master sales of fentanyl-laced fake oxycodone pills. Each review contains a Feedback column that lists comments in bold and product descriptions in regular type. For example, one review contained a positive comment and immediately below that a line of text that read: “Fentanyl - Roxy Oxycodone - 30mg X100.” Aplt. App. at 85. Biundo created a spreadsheet in which the type and quantity of the drug involved in each transaction (derived from the product description) were compiled and reported row by row. Biundo added the quantities of drugs that were purportedly sold in 3,491 transactions to calculate that 458,946 fake oxycodone pills were sold through the Pharma-Master storefront on AlphaBay. The prosecution pointed out on direct examination of Biundo the overwhelmingly positive feedback left on the storefront and then argued to the jury that the customer comments “about how good the[] pills were, that they in fact contained the Fentanyl, as advertised,” R., Vol. II at 1747, supported a conclusion that the pills actually contained fentanyl. But Biundo did not verify that the orders reflected in the screenshots were shipped or received, or that they contained the substance mentioned in the listing. 16 Appellate Case: 20-4116 Document: 010110695524 Date Filed: 06/10/2022 Page: 17 Defendant claims that the district court erred in admitting the screenshots into evidence, over objection, on the grounds that they were not properly authenticated and constituted hearsay. Defendant’s authentication argument is that it was insufficient that Biundo testified that she took the screenshots because the government needed to provide testimony from someone who had personal knowledge of the site, such as a webmaster, or who could otherwise verify the accuracy of the data. He also presents a cursory argument why the screenshots were inadmissible hearsay, merely asserting that they were and discussing one case where “the court rejected evidence of a chat not involving the defendant conducted on a Dark Web website as hearsay.” Aplt. Br. at 45. He contends that the erroneous admission of the screenshots prejudiced him because “[a]lternative evidence did not exist to prove the quantities required for the continuing criminal enterprise count.” Aplt. Reply Br. at 20. We need not resolve whether the screenshots were erroneously admitted because any error was harmless in light of the compelling evidence establishing the minimum required quantity of fentanyl-containing drugs involved in Defendant’s enterprise. See United States v. Solomon, 399 F.3d 1231, 1238 (10th Cir. 2005) (“A nonconstitutional harmless error is one that does not have a substantial influence on the outcome of the trial; nor does it leave one in grave doubt as to whether it had such effect. Thus, where there is an abundance of evidence regarding the defendant’s guilt, the nonconstitutional error will be deemed harmless.” (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). To support the mandatory life sentence, the government 17 Appellate Case: 20-4116 Document: 010110695524 Date Filed: 06/10/2022 Page: 18 needed to prove that Defendant’s CCE offense involved at least 12,000 grams of substances containing fentanyl. But about 12,825 grams of substances seized from Defendant’s operation tested positive for fentanyl. The drugs seized from the TongeBustin residence—where Defendant sent pills for packaging and shipping—and the outbound orders from just two days in November 2016 alone added up to more than 12,000 grams. The only reasonable inference was that significantly more fentanyl was involved in the criminal enterprise. To begin with, not all the drugs that were seized were tested. More importantly, Defendant himself admitted that he directly supplied trainer Kenny with fentanyl-laced pills (and Paz testified that thousands of pills (each weighing .1 gram) were given to the trainer in the course of a number of transactions). Also, Defendant had been selling large quantities of fentanyl-laced pills online for months before November 2016: Paz described how he pressed tens of thousands of pills in the summer and fall of 2016; Tonge said that she found it strange when she started handling orders of “1,000, 2,000, 5,000 pills,” R., Vol. II at 613; and Defendant himself acknowledged that he was being “flooded with more orders” as business picked up in the months leading to November 2016, id. at 1628.8