Court Opinion

ID: 9409776
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-19 15:01:34.111142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:53.417944
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 23-11561      Document: 24-1    Date Filed: 07/19/2023   Page: 1 of 8

                                                   [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                    In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                            ____________________

                                 No. 23-11561
                            Non-Argument Calendar
                            ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                       Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       LOUIS PAIVA, JR.,

                                                   Defendant-Appellant.

                            ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Florida
                  D.C. Docket No. 4:22-cr-00031-MW-MAF-1
                          ____________________
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       2                       Opinion of the Court                  23-11561

       Before ROSENBAUM, JILL PRYOR, and LUCK, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Louis Paiva, Jr., appeals his conviction for stealing federal
       money by making false statements on an application for COVID-
       19 unemployment relief funds. He argues that the district court
       plainly erred in accepting his plea because, his false statements
       aside, he qualified for the benefits and thus didn’t steal them. But
       the district court didn’t plainly err in finding a factual basis to con-
       clude that Paiva wasn’t entitled to the unemployment benefits, so
       we affirm.

           FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
              To alleviate the economic effects of COVID-19, Congress
       enacted legislation in March 2020 that provided supplemental fund-
       ing for state-administered unemployment benefits. The President
       reallocated additional disaster relief funds in August 2020 for the
       same purpose. The result was four programs that worked together
       to channel federal financial aid to persons who’d lost employment
       income due to the pandemic: Pandemic Unemployment Assis-
       tance, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, Pan-
       demic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, and Lost
       Wages Assistance.
              In early 2022, the Department of Homeland Security began
       investigating employees who might have applied for and received
       unemployment benefits while they were still working for the
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       23-11561               Opinion of the Court                         3

       government. Investigators determined that, between March 2020
       and March 2021, Paiva had received over $16,000 (after taxes) in
       unemployment benefits through the pandemic relief programs—
       even while employed the whole time by the Transportation Secu-
       rity Administration in Orlando. Paiva had submitted an application
       for unemployment benefits to the Florida Department of Eco-
       nomic Opportunity where he certified that (1) he was not a federal
       civilian employee, (2) he did not work full time, and (3) he was not
       earning at least $275 per week. None of those things were true.
       Likewise, Paiva repeatedly submitted recertifications for unem-
       ployment benefits that falsely claimed he wasn’t “earn[ing] any
       money,” wasn’t “receiv[ing] . . . income from any other sources
       that [he hadn’t] previously reported” to the state, and was “still un-
       employed as a direct result of COVID-19.”
               Paiva agreed to a voluntary interview with DHS agents in
       March 2022. He told the agents that he had started a computer-
       repair company in 2018 that supplemented his government salary,
       but his self-employment earnings collapsed during the pandemic.
       When confronted with bank statements and his falsified unemploy-
       ment benefits applications, Paiva initially told the agents that he
       believed the questions about alternative income related only to his
       self-employment at his computer repair business. But he later ad-
       mitted that he knew when he submitted the application and recer-
       tifications that his claims to lack additional income were false.
       Paiva provided a sworn statement to the agents stating that he’d
       made false statements on the unemployment benefits application
       but wanted to make it right.
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       4                      Opinion of the Court                  23-11561

              Paiva was indicted for theft of more than one thousand dol-
       lars of public money, in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 641. He
       pleaded guilty and stipulated to the facts described above. The plea
       agreement provided that Paiva was waiving his trial rights, that he
       was “in fact guilty,” and that there was “substantial evidence . . . to
       support the charge[], . . . as indicated in the agreed-upon statement
       of facts” he’d signed. In exchange, the government agreed not to
       file any additional charges based on the events that gave rise to the
       indictment.
              At the plea hearing, Paiva testified that he’d signed the plea
       agreement knowingly and voluntarily, that he understood he was
       waiving his right to appeal his guilt or innocence, and that he un-
       derstood the charges in the indictment and the elements of the of-
       fense. When asked about the offense conduct, Paiva admitted that
       he “knowingly made false statements to get money that [he] knew
       [he wasn’t] entitled to.” The district court accepted his plea under
       Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11 and adjudicated Paiva
       guilty. Paiva was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment and or-
       dered to pay restitution. This is his appeal.

                                  DISCUSSION
              Paiva contends that the district court plainly erred in accept-
       ing his guilty plea because there wasn’t a sufficient factual basis for
       it to do so. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(3). He argues that the pan-
       demic-relief programs he applied to entitled him to receive unem-
       ployment benefits for lost wages from his self-employment as a
       computer repairman, even though he was employed and had
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       23-11561                Opinion of the Court                           5

       additional income at the time. If Paiva was entitled to the benefits
       he received, he contends, then the government did not “retain[] a
       property interest” in them to be wrongfully deprived of. See United
       States v. McRee, 7 F.3d 976, 980 (11th Cir. 1993). And if the money
       did not belong to the government, then there was no factual basis
       for his plea. See United States v. Wilson, 788 F.3d 1298, 1309 (11th
       Cir. 2015) (To prove theft, the government must established “that
       (1) the money described in the indictment belonged to the United
       States or an agency thereof; (2) the defendant appropriated the
       property to his own use; and (3) the defendant did so knowingly
       with intent to deprive the government of the money.”).
               We can review Paiva’s “Rule 11 claim that there [was] an
       insufficient factual basis to support a guilty plea,” even though he
       didn’t raise it to the district court. United States v. Puentes-Hurtado,
       974 F.3d 1278, 1284 (11th Cir. 2015). But, because the Rule 11 ar-
       gument wasn’t raised to the district court, our review is for plain
       error. See id. at 1285–86 (citing Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b)); see also
       United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 58–59 (2002) (holding that “a de-
       fendant who lets a Rule 11 error pass without objection in the trial
       court” may challenge such an error under “the plain-error rule and
       that a reviewing court may consult the whole record when consid-
       ering the effect of any error on substantive rights”).
              To establish that the district court plainly erred in accepting
       his guilty plea without a factual basis, Paiva must show that: (1)
       the district court erred; (2) the error was plain; (3) the error affected
       his substantial rights; and (4) it seriously affected the fairness,
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                 23-11561

       integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. United States
       v. Kushmaul, 984 F.3d 1359, 1363 (11th Cir. 2021). “Regarding the
       second prong of the test, such error must be so clearly established
       and obvious that it should not have been permitted by the trial
       court even absent the defendant’s timely assistance in detecting it.”
       Id. (quotation and alteration omitted). “When the explicit lan-
       guage of a statute or rule does not specifically resolve an issue,
       there can be no plain error where there is no precedent from the
       Supreme Court or this Court directly resolving it.” Id. (quotation
       omitted).
              Here, any error in accepting the guilty plea without a factual
       basis was not so clear and obvious. As part of the Coronavirus Eco-
       nomic Stabilization Act, the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment
       Compensation program allowed states to receive federal funds to
       extend unemployment benefits to “individuals who . . . ha[d] ex-
       hausted all rights to compensation under [s]tate law” for that ben-
       efit year, had “no rights to regular compensation with respect to a
       week under such law or any other [s]tate unemployment compen-
       sation law” and were “able to work, available to work, and actively
       seeking work.” 15 U.S.C. § 9025(a)(2). This program also condi-
       tioned eligibility upon “the terms and conditions of the [s]tate law
       which appl[ied] to claims for regular compensation and to the pay-
       ment thereof (including terms and conditions relating to availabil-
       ity for work, active search for work, and refusal to accept
       work) . . . , except where otherwise inconsistent with the provi-
       sions” of that program. Id. § 9025(a)(4)(B). An individual was not
       deemed “actively seeking work” unless he had “engaged in an
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       23-11561               Opinion of the Court                         7

       active search for employment . . . appropriate in light of the em-
       ployment available in the labor market, the individual’s skills and
       capabilities,” and “ha[d] maintained a record of such work search.”
       Id. § 9025(a)(7)(A).
               Despite receiving thousands of dollars under the Pandemic
       Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, Paiva did not
       clearly and obviously qualify for the unemployment benefits. The
       district court had no indication in the record that Paiva was actively
       seeking work when he applied for state benefits. See id.
       § 9025(a)(2)(D). He had a full-time job, and nothing in the record
       indicated that he was searching for other employment while he
       was applying to or receiving funds from the state.
               Also, the program conditioned receipt of funds on an indi-
       vidual’s general eligibility for state-provided unemployment bene-
       fits according to the relevant “terms and conditions” of the state
       unemployment insurance system. Id. § 9025(a)(4)(B). But an indi-
       vidual is only qualified to receive Florida unemployment benefits
       if he is, in fact, “unemployed.” Fla. Stat. § 443.091(1). There is no
       place within the state’s definition of “unemployed” for someone
       working a full-time job—or even working “less than full-time
       work,” so long as his weekly income is greater than his “weekly
       benefit amount” under state law. Id. § 443.036(44).
              Because Paiva wasn’t unemployed, he wasn’t clearly and ob-
       viously eligible for state benefits. And because he wasn’t clearly
       and obviously eligible for state benefits, the district court did not
       plainly err in finding that Paiva was not entitled to the thousands
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       8                    Opinion of the Court               23-11561

       of dollars in supplemental federal benefits he received under the
       Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.
             AFFIRMED.