Opinion ID: 71480
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Williams's Case

Text: Williams worked as a tollbooth operator at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). In late June or early July 2007, Curtis Davis (Davis) drove up to Williams's tollbooth, identified himself as D, and spoke to Williams about making some extra money. Williams indicated that he was interested, so Davis gave him a credit card skimmer and told him to pass his customers' credit cards through it before giving the cards back to them. Davis told Williams that the skimmer recorded and stored the information found on the magnetic strips of the cards. Williams began regularly passing his customer's credit cards through the skimmer. In late July 2007, Davis returned and gave Williams $2,000.00 in exchange for the skimmer. On August 3, 2007, Davis returned the skimmer to Williams, so he could resume recording his customers' information. Williams was arrested on August 7, 2007, after investigators determined that twenty-two different credit card fraud cases under investigation had charges to his tollbooth in common. He had the skimmer in his possession when he was arrested, and he admitted to having skimmed over 500 credit cards. It was later determined that the exact number was 547. He cooperated with the investigators and identified Davis. On March 5, 2008, Williams was charged with one count of conspiracy to traffic and use unauthorized access devices. He pleaded guilty to the indictment on July 15, 2008. His PSR recommended that he be held accountable for an intended loss of $2,649,287.25. This figure was calculated by adding $2,545,287.25, the aggregate credit limit for the 339 credit cards of which the credit limits were known, to $104,000.00, which represented a $500.00 loss for each of the 208 cards for which the credit limits were not known. [6] The PSR also recommended a four-level enhancement based on its finding that Williams's fraud had involved more than fifty victims. USSG § 2B1.1(b)(2)(B). Following the PSR's reasoning, the range prescribed by the Sentencing Guidelines for Williams's conduct would normally have been seventy-eight to ninety-seven months. However, Williams had pleaded guilty to conspiracy, which carried a maximum sentence of sixty months' imprisonment. 18 U.S.C. § 371. Therefore, the Sentencing Guidelines recommended sentence was 60 months (USSG § 5G1.1(a)), and the PSR recommended a sentence of sixty months' imprisonment. Williams objected to the PSR on two grounds. First, he argued that the aggregate credit limit should not have been used to calculate his intended loss. Instead, he argued that he should only be held responsible for a loss of $157,138.22. This figure was calculated by adding the sum of the actual loss inflicted on the accounts with known credit limits, $53,138.22, to the $104,000.00 total for the 208 cards for which the limits were unknown. [7] Second, he argued that only eight of the sixty-three banks whose information had been compromised were victims within the meaning of the Sentencing Guidelines, because only eight of the banks had reported an actual loss. At sentencing, Williams renewed his objections. The district court overruled them, finding, in accordance with the PSR, that the amount of loss he had inflicted yielded a recommended range of seventy-eight to ninety-seven months, but that this had to be reduced to sixty months in Williams's case due to the fact that he had pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Accordingly, the district court sentenced him to sixty months' imprisonment with three years' supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $53,138.22 in restitution. If the district court had assessed the loss inflicted by Williams at $157,138.22 but continued to find that there were more than fifty victims, his guideline recommended range would have been thirty-three to forty-one months' imprisonment. If the district court had assessed the loss at $157,138.22 and reduced the number of victims to eight, his recommended range would have been twenty-one to twenty seven months. And if the district court had reduced the number of victims to eight, but continued to assess the loss at $2,649,287.25, then Williams's recommended range would have been fifty-one to sixty months. Williams timely filed a notice of appeal on December 8, 2008.