Court Opinion

ID: 9396763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-23 18:00:55.856096+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:19.533885
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-11501    Document: 31-1     Date Filed: 05/23/2023   Page: 1 of 6

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]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

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-11501
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       APRIL THOMPSON,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Northern District of Georgia
                  D.C. Docket No. 1:19-cr-00378-ELR-CMS-1
                           ____________________
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                 22-11501

       Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, and BRANCH and ANDERSON,
       Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              April Thompson appeals her sentence of 80 months of im-
       prisonment imposed after she pleaded guilty to ten counts of mail
       fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 2. Thompson challenges the enhancement
       of her sentence by two levels for obstructing justice, United States
       Sentencing Guidelines Manual § 3C1.1, and the denial of a reduc-
       tion for accepting responsibility, id. § 3E1.1. We affirm Thomp-
       son’s sentence, but because the district court made a clerical error
       in imposing a special assessment of $1,100, instead of $1,000 based
       on her ten counts of conviction, see 18 U.S.C. § 3013(a)(2)(A), we
       vacate and remand for the district court to correct the judgment.
               We review factual findings by a district court for clear error
       and its application of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo. United
       States v. Matthews, 3 F.4th 1286, 1289 (11th Cir. 2021). To be clearly
       erroneous, the finding of the district court must leave us with a
       “definite and firm conviction that the court made a mistake.” Id.
              The district court did not clearly err by applying the obstruc-
       tion of justice enhancement, § 3C1.1, because Thompson con-
       cealed relevant financial information from the probation officer.
       Thompson told the probation officer that, aside from her non-liq-
       uid assets, she had only $80 in a personal checking account. A sen-
       ior financial investigator with the U.S. Attorney’s Office later dis-
       covered an undisclosed reloadable MetaBank account that was
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       22-11501              Opinion of the Court                        3

       registered in Thompson’s husband’s name. The bank statements
       revealed that, during a six-month period, both Thompson and her
       husband used debit cards linked to the account to make almost
       $40,000 in post-indictment purchases, including $24,000 in cash
       withdrawals. The government also discovered that, in November
       2021, about three weeks before Thompson pleaded guilty, she be-
       gan diverting her income from a receiver-controlled bank account
       into the undisclosed MetaBank account. She later acknowledged
       that undisclosed bank account belonged to her and insisted that her
       failure to disclose the account was an immaterial oversight.
               Sufficient evidence supports the finding that Thompson
       willfully concealed the existence of the bank account. See United
       States v. Massey, 443 F.3d 814, 818–19 (11th Cir. 2004). Both Thomp-
       son and her husband, a codefendant, omitted the account from
       their disclosures to the probation officer and the government. At
       sentencing, the receiver in the civil action testified that, when he
       asked Thompson why her income was no longer being deposited
       into her usual bank account, she said that her income had been put
       “on pause,” and she failed to inform him about the MetaBank ac-
       count. After diverting her income into the MetaBank account,
       Thompson withdrew large sums of cash and made almost daily
       purchases from the account during a six-month period that ended
       the month before her sentencing. The district court did not clearly
       err in finding that Thompson’s explanation was implausible and
       that, regardless of her “shameful” conduct in the civil lawsuit, she
       had deliberately misled the probation officer to ensure that the
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       4                       Opinion of the Court                  22-11501

       district court, government, and victim of her multi-million-dollar
       invoicing scheme would not know the true extent of her assets.
              Thompson’s willful omission met the “conspicuously low”
       bar for materiality too. See United States v. Odedina, 980 F.2d 705,
       707 (11th Cir. 1993). Revealing the account and the significant
       transactions that depleted the account balance during the criminal
       proceedings could have reasonably led the district court to disbe-
       lieve that Thompson was remorseful for her offense conduct.
       Thompson makes much of the fact that the MetaBank account bal-
       ance was only $105.13 when she submitted her financial report to
       the probation officer and argues that this amount was not enough
       to be “material.” But her argument ignores the fact that, in the
       month before and after the disclosure, the couple spent and with-
       drew over $4,500 from the account and deposited over $8,250. The
       existence of the account and the significant funds deposited and
       withdrawn from it were not immaterial to the ability of the district
       court to fashion an appropriate sentence, especially when consid-
       ering her offense conduct of executing a large-scale invoicing
       scheme.
               Thompson argues that the district court erred by denying a
       reduction for acceptance of responsibility, U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1, be-
       cause she pleaded guilty and accepted responsibility for her crimes.
       She argues that, in the light of Kisor v. Wilkie, the plain text of sec-
       tion 3E1.1 is unambiguous, so the commentary impermissibly ex-
       pands the conduct that can result in a denial of the reduction. 139
       S. Ct. 2400, 2415 (2019).
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       22-11501                Opinion of the Court                          5

               In Stinson, the Supreme Court ruled that the commentary to
       the Sentencing Guidelines should receive the same deference that
       an administrative agency’s interpretation of its own rules receives.
       Stinson v. United States, 508 U.S. 36, 45 (1993). This deference was
       first described in Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., 325 U.S. 410,
       414 (1945), and affirmed in Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461 (1997).
       In Kisor, the Supreme Court clarified that Auer deference should be
       applied only if an administrative regulation is “genuinely
       ambiguous” and that, “[i]f uncertainty does not exist, there is no
       plausible reason for deference” and “[t]he regulation then just
       means what it means . . . .” 139 S. Ct. at 2414–15. We recently
       explained that Kisor’s clarification of Auer and Seminole Rock applies
       to the Sentencing Guidelines and that the commentary cannot
       deviate from an unambiguous guideline. See United States v. Dupree,
       57 F.4th 1269, 1275, 1277 (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc) (holding that
       the defendant’s conviction for conspiring to possess with intent to
       distribute controlled substances was not a “controlled substance
       offense” because the plain text of the guideline unambiguously
       excluded inchoate crimes).
              Section 3E1.1(a) instructs the district court to reduce the of-
       fense level by two levels “[i]f the defendant clearly demonstrates
       acceptance of responsibility for [her] offense.” U.S.S.G. § 3E1.1(a).
       The guideline does not define what constitutes “acceptance of re-
       sponsibility,” much less state that pleading guilty is sufficient to re-
       ceive the reduction. The district court did not err by denying the
       reduction because Thompson failed to meet her burden of proving
       that she had actually accepted personal responsibility where she
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       6                      Opinion of the Court                22-11501

       made incomplete financial disclosures and engaged in a hidden pat-
       tern of spending and cash withdrawals that would prevent the vic-
       tim from obtaining restitution. See United States v. Sawyer, 180 F.3d
       1319, 1323 (11th Cir. 1999).
               We AFFIRM in part Thompson’s sentence and VACATE
       AND REMAND in part for the limited purpose of correcting a cler-
       ical error in the judgment.