United States v. Erica Crabb

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: January 26, 2026
• Docket: 25-1591
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION File Name: 26a0048n.06

Case No. 25-1591

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT FILED Jan 26, 2026 KELLY L. STEPHENS, Clerk ) UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ) Plaintiff-Appellee, ) ON APPEAL FROM THE ) UNITED STATES DISTRICT v. ) COURT FOR THE EASTERN ) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN ERICA CRABB, ) Defendant-Appellant. ) OPINION ) )

Before: GILMAN, GRIFFIN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge. Erica Crabb used her employer’s credit cards

to pay for personal expenses and take out cash advances, in sum totaling over $460,000. She paid

off the charges and cash advances using company funds. Crabb covered up these transactions by

carefully calibrating the amount and timing of these payments to legitimate payments used for

business expenses, and by making false entries in the company’s accounting system.

When Crabb’s embezzlement was eventually discovered, she pleaded guilty without a plea

agreement to three counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. The district court

sentenced her to one year and a day of imprisonment, to be followed by three years of supervised

release, and ordered her to pay $461,586 in restitution.

On appeal, Crabb challenges the restitution amount as well as the district court’s

application of sentencing enhancements for causing losses over $250,000 and for using No. 25-1591, United States v. Crabb

“sophisticated means” to conceal her crimes. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM in

part, VACATE in part, and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

From August 2003 through October 2018, Crabb was employed as a controller at Grand

Blanc Processing, LLC (Grand Blanc). She was responsible for managing at least ten company

credit cards held by herself and other employees for authorized business transactions. Her duties

included opening and issuing credit cards to Grand Blanc personnel for business expenses,

reconciling the accounts each month, printing card statements and collecting receipts from each

cardholder to compile them for Grand Blanc’s president or vice president to review, preparing

checks to the credit-card company to pay the balances, and making electronic-fund transfers

between Grand Blanc’s accounts.

Beginning in August 2009, Crabb eventually opened five credit-card accounts that she used

to pay for her personal expenses, not business expenses, and to take out personal cash advances.

She held one such card at a time. A management official apparently authorized Crabb to use the

cards for personal expenses, but with the understanding that she was responsible for paying them

off with her own funds.

Crabb incurred thousands of dollars in personal charges and took out thousands of dollars

in cash advances on the cards, all of which totaled more than $460,000. She then paid off the

credit-card bills with company funds. Ultimately, she reimbursed Grand Blanc for only a small

amount of her personal expenses before she ceased working at the company in October 2018.

Crabb took steps to conceal these personal transactions. As part of reconciling the

company’s credit-card accounts each month, she would calculate the total amount that Grand

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Blanc owed on the outstanding balances of all of the credit cards combined for authorized business

expenses. The company paid off the total bill with a single payment.

Crabb was required to get approval from the president or vice president of Grand Blanc to

make the payments to the credit-card company. After getting approval, she would send an

electronic-fund transfer (EFT) or check from Grand Blanc’s business-checking account to pay off

the authorized business expenses, and a second EFT or check in the same amount to the credit-

card account that she was using for her personal transactions. Crabb did not seek approval from

management for the second payment.

To generate these payments, Crabb had to make entries in the Grand Blanc accounting

system. She would first enter the authorized payment for her and the other employees’ business

expenses correctly. To cover up the second payment, Crabb used different tactics. Sometimes,

she would manipulate the payroll. She would overstate in the accounting software the amount to

be paid for payroll by the exact amount of the payment made on the credit card that she was using

for her personal transactions. Crabb would then send the correct sum to the payroll-processing

company for payment to employees. Other times, Crabb would falsely label the second payment

in the accounting system as a payment into a retirement account managed by the company Voya.

As a result of these tactics, the accounting system reflected that Grand Blanc had made only one

payment on its credit cards, and that all outgoing funds were accounted for.

After Crabb left Grand Blanc in October 2018, this conduct was discovered. Crabb was

indicted in September 2023 on three counts of wire fraud. She pleaded guilty without a plea

agreement to all three counts in July 2024. After sentencing, Crabb timely appealed.

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II. ANALYSIS

A. The district court abused its discretion when it ordered Crabb to pay $461,586 in restitution

We review the amount of restitution ordered by the district court under the abuse-of-

discretion standard, United States v. Sawyer, 825 F.3d 287, 292 (6th Cir. 2016), and we review the

scope of the restitution order de novo, see United States v. Gray, 121 F.4th 578, 586 (6th Cir.

2024). Crabb challenges both the amount of restitution ordered and the scope of the restitution

award. We find merit in the first challenge but not the second.

In the Presentence Report (PSR), the government calculated a total loss of $461,586 caused

by Crabb’s conduct, apportioned between Grand Blanc and its insurer, Chubb Insurance.

Crabb objected in her Sentencing Memorandums to the restitution award recommended in the

PSR. Over Crabb’s objection, the district court adopted the PSR’s recommendation and ordered

Crabb to pay the $461,586 in restitution pursuant to the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act,

18 U.S.C. § 3663A.

Courts can order restitution for only the actual losses that victims suffer. United States v.

Fike, 140 F.4th 351, 357 (6th Cir. 2025). A court abuses its discretion when it orders restitution

without properly determining the amount of the loss based on accurate information. United States

v. Joseph, 914 F.2d 780, 785 (6th Cir. 1990) (per curiam).

Here, the district court abused its discretion when it failed to subtract from the restitution

award the small amount of money that Crabb paid back to Grand Blanc. At the sentencing hearing,

a forensic accountant with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) testified that Crabb’s personal

bank records indicated that Crabb had paid $5,591.87 to the credit-card company from her personal

account. Assuming that this amount paid off some of her personal expenses, the government

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asserted that the losses totaled $455,994.98, which is less than the amount of restitution that the

district court ultimately awarded.

The FBI’s forensic accountant also acknowledged that Crabb had written checks from her

personal account to Grand Blanc in the amount of $13,220. She understood that some of the

$13,220 went toward repaying a 401(k) loan that Crabb had taken out and part went toward

reimbursing Grand Blanc for her husband’s travel when he accompanied her on a work trip. The

forensic accountant further found additional payments, totaling $16,729.11, paid to the order of

Grand Blanc, “attention Erica Crabb,” from Voya, the company that managed Grand Blanc’s

retirement-savings program. But she concluded that these latter payments referenced Crabb

because of her role as controller, not because she had made payments to reimburse Grand Blanc

from her retirement savings.

The district court did not make any findings about whether any of these payments might

have offset the alleged losses caused by her wire fraud when it ordered Crabb to pay the $461,586

in restitution. That oversight may be understandable because the parties discussed these amounts

primarily when debating whether Crabb caused more than $250,000 in losses for purposes of her

Guidelines range. Still, we find that her general challenge to the restitution award sufficed to

preserve the issue. Because any money that Crabb repaid is not a loss, we vacate the restitution

award with instructions for the district court to subtract from the restitution award any payments

that Crabb made to Grand Blanc for reimbursement or toward the balance of the company’s credit

cards used to pay for her personal expenses or to take out personal cash advances.

Crabb makes additional arguments challenging the restitution award that we find less

persuasive. She contests the proof that the district court relied on in calculating the restitution

amount, arguing that the court’s order was based on “speculation” and on “broad generalizations

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rather than transaction-level tracing to her conduct.” Without presenting any evidence, Crabb

alludes to “significant discrepancies” in “the government’s accounting methods” and the court’s

purported failure to consider “the later time period where the Government had better records.”

We are not persuaded by these arguments.

“[T]he information underlying [a restitution] award must have ‘sufficient indicia of

reliability to support its probable accuracy.’” United States v. Sawyer, 825 F.3d 287, 295 (6th Cir.

2016) (quoting United States v. Jackson-Randolph, 282 F.3d 369, 386 (6th Cir. 2002)). Here, the

government presented a forensic-accounting report generated by Yeo & Yeo, P.C., an accounting,

tax, and business-consulting firm. The report laid out each personal charge that Crabb made on

the credit cards, including the date, amount, and vendor. It also documented the cash advances

that Crabb took out, including the date and amount.

The government also presented testimony from a forensic accountant with the FBI

regarding Crabb’s claim that she had paid Grand Blanc back for some of the charges and cash

advances that paid for her personal expenses. She noted the FBI’s review of Crabb’s bank-account

statements, payroll statements, and checks that Crabb had written to Grand Blanc, as well as the

FBI’s examination of Grand Blanc’s records. Many of the underlying documents were submitted

to the district court for its review. Under these circumstances, the court did not abuse its discretion

in relying on this evidence. See Sawyer, 825 F.3d at 296–97 (holding that the district court did not

abuse its discretion in relying on an accounting report and testimony from the victim that

substantiated the report to calculate the restitution award).

Crabb also challenges the scope of the restitution award, arguing that restitution should be

restricted to the “three discrete unauthorized transactions” alleged in the counts to which she

pleaded guilty—a total of $32,951.82 in losses. But under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act,

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18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(2), courts can order restitution for injuries caused by the “scheme,

conspiracy, or pattern of criminal activity” for which the defendant was convicted. See United

States v. Elson, 577 F.3d 713, 722–23 (6th Cir. 2009). Where, as here, the defendant is convicted

pursuant to a guilty plea rather than by a jury, we look to the “plea agreement, the plea colloquy,

and other statements made by the parties to determine the scope of the ‘offense of conviction’ for

the purposes of restitution.” Id. at 723 (citation modified).

Crabb pleaded guilty without a plea agreement. But at the plea colloquy, the government

and Crabb’s counsel agreed that she was pleading guilty to three counts of specific acts in

furtherance of a “scheme to defraud.” Because the plea colloquy demonstrates that the parties

“contemplated a [scheme] that went beyond” solely the three unauthorized transactions supporting

Crabb’s conviction, the district court “had authority to order restitution for losses resulting from

any conduct that was part of the [scheme].” See Elson, 577 F.3d at 724 (quoting United States v.

Cothran, 302 F.3d 279, 290 (5th Cir. 2002)). Accordingly, we find no error in determining the

scope of the restitution award.

B. The district court did not err in finding that Crabb caused losses of over $250,000, triggering a sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(1)

Crabb next challenges the district court’s application of a sentencing enhancement under

United States Sentencing Guideline § 2B1.1(b)(1) for causing losses over $250,000. We review

the method that the district court used to calculate losses de novo, and we review the court’s factual

findings as to the amount of the loss under the clear-error standard. See United States v.

Wendlandt, 714 F.3d 388, 393 (6th Cir. 2013). Crabb raises challenges to both the method that

the district court used to calculate the losses and its factual findings.

“When calculating the Guidelines range for a defendant convicted of fraud, the sentence is

enhanced ‘in proportion to the amount of actual or intended pecuniary loss that resulted from his

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offense.’” United States v. Johnson, 79 F.4th 684, 706 (6th Cir. 2023) (quoting United States v.

Igboba, 964 F.3d 501, 508 (6th Cir. 2020)). “The court need only make a reasonable estimate of

the loss.” U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1 cmt. n.3(B); see also United States v. Howley, 707 F.3d 575, 583 (6th

Cir. 2013).

At the sentencing hearing, the district court noted its consideration of the “witness’s

testimony, the exhibits that were admitted, the investigation that was done in terms of the bank

statements, [and] the accounts of the company.” The court specifically “g[ave] the defendant the

benefit of the doubt” in finding that Crabb had caused a loss of over $250,000.

But Crabb contends that “no argument was presented that the Defendant had an intended

loss greater than the actual loss.” She seems to suggest that the loss amount was calculated based

on uncharged conduct. The sentencing enhancement, however, was applied based on actual losses

caused by the fraudulent scheme that Crabb pleaded guilty to. This argument is therefore without

merit.

Crabb next argues that, although she “is not maintaining that she provided restitution for

stolen funds,” the government failed to meet its burden of showing that Crabb did not return the

money. She faults the government for failing to investigate her personnel folder, which she claims

contains documentation that exonerates her, and for failing to investigate two other individuals

employed by Grand Blanc who might have stolen company funds that she is accused of not paying

back.

But the government conducted a substantial investigation into Crabb’s claims that she had

paid back some of the money. The government reviewed Crabb’s accounts at various banks, traced

checks that she had written to Grand Blanc, and scrutinized electronic-fund transfers that she made

to the credit-card companies. It also reviewed Grand Blanc’s checking-account records and

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deposits for “any checks that were written possibly from Erica Crabb,” as well as Crabb’s personal

payroll account for any potential deductions that she might have taken to pay back Grand Blanc.

The district court did not err when it found that this investigation was sufficient to support its

finding, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Crabb had not paid back anywhere near the

approximately $210,000 required to reduce the loss amount below $250,000.

Finally, Crabb complains that the loss amount was based on broad extrapolation and

speculation rather than on transaction-level tracing. But as described in Part A above, the forensic-

accounting report produced by Yeo & Yeo, as well as the testimony of the FBI’s forensic

accountant, belie this contention.

C. The district court did not err in finding that Crabb used sophisticated means to conceal her fraud, triggering a sentencing enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(10)

Crabb’s final argument is that the district court erred in finding that her offense involved

sophisticated means, a finding that supported the application of a two-level enhancement under

U.S.S.G. § 2B1.1(b)(10)(C). “[S]ophisticated means” are “especially complex or especially

intricate offense conduct pertaining to the execution or concealment of an offense.” U.S.S.G.

§ 2B1.1, cmt. n.9(B).

As a panel of this court recently noted, we have not yet clarified what standard of review

applies to a district court’s conclusion that the facts meet the Guideline’s definition of

“sophisticated means.” See United States v. Karasarides, 159 F.4th 972, 997–98 (6th Cir. 2025).

Past panels have reviewed the district court’s conclusion de novo, United States v. Daulton, 266

F. App’x 381, 388 (6th Cir. 2008), as well as under the clear-error standard, United States v.

Thomas, 841 F. App’x 934, 938 (6th Cir. 2021); United States v. Simmerman, 850 F.3d 829, 832

(6th Cir. 2017). But we need not resolve this inconsistency here. Regardless of the standard of

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review, the district court properly applied the enhancement when it found that Crabb’s coverup

involved sophisticated means.

Crabb argues that the coverup was simple: she “paid her personal credit with company

funds and entered a false entry to conceal it.” But her methods in effecting the coverup were in

fact far from simple. Crabb was responsible for managing at least ten credit cards for Grand Blanc

that she and other employees used for business expenses. Each month, Crabb sent an authorized

payment on the credit cards used for business expenses in the exact amount that she paid on the

credit-card account that she was using for her personal transactions, presumably so that someone

quickly reviewing the payment records might not notice it.

Crabb then made sophisticated false entries in Grand Blanc’s accounting systems to

conceal these duplicate payments. Sometimes, she would overstate the amount in the accounting

software to be paid in payroll by the exact amount of the double payment made on the credit card

that she was using for personal expenses or cash advances. She would then send the correct sum

to the payroll-processing company for payment to employees. Other times, Crabb would falsely

label the second payment in the accounting system as a payment into a retirement account managed

by the company Voya.

This court’s decision in United States v. Simmerman, 850 F.3d 829 (6th Cir. 2017),

supports the conclusion that this conduct involved sophisticated means. In Simmerman, the

defendant stole money from her employer, a credit union, by removing cash from a cabinet referred

to as “the vault.” Id. at 831. Although the act of taking the money out of the vault may have been

relatively straightforward, we affirmed the district court’s finding that Simmerman used

sophisticated means because of how she covered up her crimes.

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Simmerman would use a company computer program “to make an entry showing the

amount of cash she had removed from the vault had been deposited into another teller’s drawer,”

but the drawer she deposited the stolen funds into was fictitious. Id. Because the drawer was not

real, the payment “was recorded by default into a ‘general ledger suspense account.’” Id. at 832.

Simmerman would then make “a manual entry suggesting that a transfer from the general ledger

suspense account back to the vault had occurred . . . . This ensured that the amount of cash the

teller module believed to be in the vault was actually correct, but meant that the general ledger

balance would be overstated by the amount of cash she had taken.” Id. Simmerman then prepared

fictitious general-ledger entries to conceal the ledger balance during audits. Id.

Here, as in Simmerman, Crabb made false and complex accounting entries to make her

crimes harder to detect. Instead of trying to distinguish Simmerman, Crabb directs our attention

to two out-of-circuit district-court cases. She relies on United States v. Lewis, 907 F. Supp. 683,

688 (S.D.N.Y. 1995), for the proposition that courts have rejected the sophisticated-means

enhancement on the basis of “far more elaborate facts.” But Crabb neglects to note that the Second

Circuit reversed the district court’s rejection of the sophisticated-means enhancement because the

tax-evasion scheme was “more complex than the routine tax-evasion case in which a taxpayer

reports false information . . . to avoid paying income taxes . . . or asserts he paid taxes that he did

not pay.” United States v. Lewis, 93 F.3d 1075, 1082–83 (2d Cir. 1996) (citations omitted). Here,

too, the scheme was “more complex” than merely charging company credit cards for personal

expenses and cash advances.

Crabb also analogizes this case to the district-court decision in United States v. Pangburn,

467 F. Supp. 3d 1103 (D.N.M. 2020). In Pangburn, the defendant manipulated payroll software

in order to duplicate salary payments to herself. Id. at 1113. The scheme was simple and easy to

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detect because the payments were made directly to the defendant and the process “did not use

carefully calibrated transaction amounts or payment schedules that would render detection

difficult.” Id. So the court found that the sophisticated-means enhancement did not apply. Id.

But here, Crabb made payments on credit-card accounts in Grand Blanc’s name and carefully

calibrated the payment amounts to avoid detection. The factors that the court emphasized in

Pangburn therefore support applying, not reversing, the sophisticated-means enhancement in this

case.

III. CONCLUSION

For all of the reasons set forth above, we AFFIRM in part, VACATE in part, and

REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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