United States v. Christopher Finazzo, Douglas Dey

682 F. App'x 6
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit·Decided March 7, 2017·No. 14-3213-cr(L), 14-3330-cr(Con)·Unpublished·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

SUMMARY ORDER

Defendant Christopher Finazzo appeals his conviction and sentence of eight years’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release. His sentence was imposed following a jury verdict of guilty on: (1) one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and. to violate the Travel Act—in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371; (2) fourteen counts of mail fraud—in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341; and (3) one count of wire fraud—in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. In addition, Finazzo appeals the $25,790,822.94 forfeiture order, and Finaz-zo and Defendant Douglas Dey both appeal the district court’s $13,690,822.94 restitution order imposed jointly and severally against them.

The charges arose from an alleged scheme in which Finazzo—a merchandising executive at Aéropostale, Inc. 1 —caused Aéropostale to use South Bay Apparel Inc. (“South Bay”)—a company controlled by Dey—as a supplier of certain apparel for retail sale by Aéropostale, in exchange for secret payments to Finazzo of portions of South Bay’s profits, On appeal, Finazzo argues, that: (1) the district court’s jury instructions regarding the “right to control” Aéropostale’s property under the mail and wire fraud statutes were improper, (2) the district court improperly gave the jury a “no-ultimate-harm” instruction, (3) there was insufficient evidence to support Finazzo’s conviction under the “right to control” theory, (4) the district court erred in excluding expert testimony offered by Finazzo, (5) the district court procedurally erred in calculating Aéropos-tale’s losses under the Sentencing Guidelines, (6) Finazzo’s eight-year prison sentence was substantively unreasonable, (7) the district court erred' in instructing the jury that forfeitability of proceeds and property need only be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, (8) the jury’s forfeiture verdict was unconstitutionally excessive, (9) the district court erred in concluding that Finazzo had waived his attorney-client privilege regarding an email that triggered Aéropostale’s investigation of the alleged fraud, and (10) the district court erred in its restitution calculation. Dey also challenges the district court’s restitution calculation.

We address points (1), (3), and (10) in an opinion simultaneously issued with this order. The opinion affirms the district court on points (1) and (3), and vacates and remands to the district court on point (10) for a new restitution calculation. In this summary order, we affirm the district court on the remaining issues. We assume the parties’ familiarity with the underlying facts and procedural history of this case.

A. “No Ultimate Harm” Instruction

In its jury instructions regarding the substantive mail-fraud counts (Counts 2-15), the district court explained that good faith of the defendant was a complete defense to a mail-fraud charge. However, the court added that:

[I]f the defendant participated in the scheme to defraud, then a belief by the defendant, if such belief existed, that ultimately everything would work out so that no one would lose any money does not require you to find that the defendant acted in good faith. If the defendant participated in the scheme for the purpose of causing some financial or *9 property loss to another, then no amount of honest belief on the part of the defendant that the scheme would, for example, ultimately make a profit, will excuse fraudulent actions or false representations by him.
As a practical matter, then, in order to sustain the charges against the defendant, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew that his conduct as a participant in the scheme was calculated to deceive and nonetheless, he participated in the alleged fraudulent scheme for the purpose of causing some loss to another.

Finazzo App’x at 100. Finazzo argues that there was no evidentiary basis for this “no ultimate harm” instruction and that it therefore improperly eliminated the Government’s burden to prove he intended to defraud Aéropostale. We review the propriety of jury instructions de novo. United States v. Botti, 711 F.3d 299, 307 (2d Cir. 2013).

This Court has acknowledged that “no ultimate harm” instructions may “appear[ ] to be at odds with the requirement that a defendant must have intended to harm his victim in order to be guilty of mail fraud.” United States v. Rossomando, 144 F.3d 197, 201 (2d Cir. 1998). However, we have stated that the “key word” in such instructions is “ultimately,” and that “the point that [such instructions] seek[ ] to convey is that where some immediate loss to the victim is contemplated by a defendant, the fact that the defendant believes .,. that he will ‘ultimately 1 be able to work things out so that the victim suffers no loss is no excuse for the real and immediate loss contemplated to result from defendant’s fraudulent conduct.” Id, As such, in cases where there is “a sufficient predicate in the record” for the instruction, “the risk that a jury might be misled into believing that no harm need be intended is reduced,” -and the instruction is permissible. Id. at 202.

We find that there was a sufficient factual predicate for the no-ultimate-harm instruction. While the defense’s theory at trial largely focused on the claim that Fi-nazzo did not intend Aéropostale to ever lose money, see id. (finding a no-ultimate-harm instruction improper where defense’s theory at trial had been that the defendant thought the victim was “never going to lose money”), the defense also emphasized that Aéropostale was ultimately quite successful over the time period of Finazzo’s alleged fraud. We find this to be a sufficient factual predicate for the no-ultimate-harm instruction, especially where the district court clarified immediately thereafter that the Government was still required to establish that Finazzo engaged in the alleged fraudulent scheme “for the purpose of causing some loss to another.” Finazzo App’x at 100. Indeed, we upheld a nearly identical clarification of a no-ultimate harm instruction in United States v. Berkovich, 168 F.3d 64 (2d Cir. 1999), because it “clearly informed the jury that they could not convict appellant unless he intended to cause loss to someone,” which “greatly reduced” the possibility of jury confusion, id. at 67.

B. Expert Testimony

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United States v. Christopher Finazzo, Douglas Dey, 682 F. App'x 6 (2d Cir. 2017).

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