Opinion ID: 2816319
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ishmael

Text: 16 In the District Court, Ishmael challenged the sophisticated means enhancement to his sentence on the same grounds that Fountain and Johnson did: that the scheme, as a whole, did not involve sophisticated means. Ishmael does not raise that argument on appeal. Instead, he argues that the District Court committed procedural error under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B). He points to the District Court’s statement during his sentencing hearing that the fraud scheme “was only possible because of the sophisticated means that, to be sure, were made possible by Ms. Fountain, not Mr. Ishmael.” Ishmael’s App. 151. Ishmael contends that this statement indicates that the District Court attributed Fountain’s sophisticated means to Ishmael and that it erred by doing so without finding that Fountain’s use of those means was reasonably foreseeable to Ishmael. He asks us to remand for resentencing so the District Court can make this finding.7 Ishmael argues that our decision in United States v. Collado, 975 F.2d 985 (3d Cir. 1992), compels us to remand for the District Court to make a finding of reasonable 7 Because Ishmael did not raise this objection in the District Court, the Government argues that we should apply plain error review. Ishmael counters that our decision in United States v. Flores-Mejia, 759 F.3d 253 (3d Cir. 2014) (en banc), does not apply retroactively, and, accordingly, that we should review for an abuse of discretion. We conclude that Ishmael’s challenge fails even if we do review for an abuse of discretion, and we thus need not decide whether his challenge should be subject to plain error review. 17 foreseeability.8 To the contrary, Collado indicates that we may conduct our own review of the record to see if it supports a finding of reasonable foreseeability. See Collado, 975 F.2d at 997. If we are convinced that the attribution of Fountain’s sophisticated means is firmly supported by the record, there is “no reason to remand this case only to have the district court reach the same sentencing decision.” United States v. Duliga, 204 F.3d 97, 101 n.2 (3d Cir. 2000). Here, it is clear that the sophisticated means Fountain employed were reasonably foreseeable to Ishmael. Fountain and Ishmael lived together and had children together. The evidence established that Ishmael knew about the IRS’s $1,500 threshold for flagging TETR claims for review, and that he knew that Fountain would reverse claimants’ refunds if they did not pay her fee. Moreover, the District Court found that Ishmael was “the engine that drove [the] conspiracy from one that might have involved a handful of phony tax refunds to one that involved hundreds at a cost of over $2 million to the United States treasury,” and that Ishmael’s leadership “succeeded in spreading [the] scheme like wild fire.” Ishmael’s App. 163. Thus, we are convinced that a finding of reasonable foreseeability is firmly supported 8 Although Collado dealt with the inclusion of drug quantities dealt by co-conspirators in a defendant’s base offense level calculation, also known as “accomplice attribution,” rather than a sophisticated means enhancement, the same “reasonably foreseeable” standard applies to each inquiry, as both are guided by § 1B1.3. See United States v. Anobah, 734 F.3d 733, 739 (7th Cir. 2013); United States v. Crosgrove, 637 F.3d 646, 666 (6th Cir. 2011). 18 by the record, and we affirm the District Court’s application of the sophisticated means enhancement to Ishmael.