United States v. Greenberg

835 F.3d 295, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 16085, 2016 WL 4536514
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedAugust 31, 2016
Docket14-4208-cr(L), 14-4278-cr(con)
StatusPublished
Cited by35 cases

This text of 835 F.3d 295 (United States v. Greenberg) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Greenberg, 835 F.3d 295, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 16085, 2016 WL 4536514 (2d Cir. 2016).

Opinion

DEBRA ANN LIVINGSTON, Circuit Judge:

This appeal arises from Daniel Green-berg’s conviction of wire fraud, access device fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering in connection with a scheme to make unauthorized credit card charges to the credit cards of customers of Greenberg’s digital retail company, Classic Closeouts, LLC (“CCL”). During the summer of 2008, there were approximately 77,000 unauthorized charges to these customer cards, totaling approximately $5 million, all supposedly related to a “Frequent Shopper Club” program at CCL. Following a civil case brought by the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and a criminal investigation, the Government filed a Superseding Indictment, charging Greenberg with eight counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343; one count of access device fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1029(a)(5) and 1029(c)(l)(A)(ii); one count of aggravated identity theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1028A(a)(l), 1028A(b), 1028A(c), and 1028A(c)(5); and three counts of money laundering through unlawful monetary transactions, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1957(a). Greenberg was convicted of all counts in January 2014, after a jury trial.

This opinion addresses two of Green-berg’s arguments on appeal. 1 First, Green-berg contends that the district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss the Superseding Indictment for spoliation of evidence. Next, he argues that the wire fraud counts should have, been dismissed because of a “lack of convergence” between the parties injured and those deceived by the “Frequent Shopper Club” scheme. We reject both arguments and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of conviction.

BACKGROUND

I. Factual Background 2

From 2002 until 2009, Greenberg owned and operated CCL, an Internet retailer of discounted clothing and other merchandise. Greenberg served as CCL’s president and managing member, and was the sole signatory on CCL’s accounts. CCL operated from 110 West Graham Avenue in Hempstead, New York (“the Premises”). CCL maintained a website, classicclose-outs.com, from which it sold its merchandise. 3 The website was certified by TRUSTe, an independent organization that certifies the privacy practices of its Internet licensees. 4

*298 In order to process credit or debit card charges for purchased items, CCL maintained a merchant account with Bank of America Merchant Services (“BAMS”). 5 In 2006, CCL entered into an agreement with Cynergy Data, LLC (“Cynergy”) to serve as CCL’s payment processor, an intermediary between the acquiring bank— BAMS — and the merchant — CCL. The agreement established a fee schedule that included a “rolling reserve,” an amount of money set in reserve by the payment processor to offset any “chargebacks” incurred by the merchant. A chargeback occurs when a cardholder contacts his issuing bank to dispute a charge appearing on his account statement, and the issuing bank charges that amount back to the acquiring bank. A “reversal” occurs when a merchant is able to prove the legitimacy of the initial transaction, and the charge reappears on the cardholder’s ac-, count (thus reversing the chargeback).

A. The Scheme

In the first part of 2008, during a period of declining sales volume at CCL, Green-berg called Jason Mizrahi, a CCL graphic designer, to task him with creating a template, supposedly for distribution to customers, to promote a CCL “Frequent Shopper Club.” This was unusual, as Mizrahi generally received assignments from his direct supervisor, head graphic designer Lisa Chin, and not Greenberg. Mizrahi designed the promotion template and provided it to Greenberg, but the designer never saw his work product on the CCL website. Greenberg did, however, send the template to Venkata Chittabathini, a CCL computer programmer, and directed him to create a program for charging customer credit cards in connection with the membership program. Notably, despite these undertakings by Greenberg, other CCL employees who were otherwise heavily involved in CCL’s marketing and sales (including CCL’s customer service manager, Simcha Geller, its warehouse manager, Alejandro Rubenstein, and Chin) never discussed the Frequent Shopper Club with Greenberg or were ever directly informed of its existence. 6

During the summer of 2008, CCL received an influx of complaints from customers asserting that their credit cards had been charged even though they had not placed an order with CCL. Customers making such complaints testified at trial that they had made at least one purchase from CCL in the past, and they were unaware that CCL had retained their credit card information. Numerous customers attempted to contact CCL about the charges during this period, but their *299 calls and voicemails frequently went unanswered. Charged in amounts ranging from $29.99 to $79.99, various of these customers testified at trial that they had never joined a frequent shopper club and had never received promotional emails or any other communication from CCL concerning such a club.

As complaints mounted, Geller informed Greenberg about the influx sometime in June 2008. 7 Greenberg responded that a computer programmer was working on the problem, a computer glitch. Even as Geller noted the questionable transactions continuing to increase — he testified that they eventually reached tens of thousands of dollars a day — Greenberg never mentioned the Frequent Shopper Club in his discussions with Geller about the issue. 8 Green-berg, however, did ask Geller whether payment for these transactions had come into the company’s bank accounts.

During this period, other companies that had a relationship with CCL — TRUSTe, Cynergy, and Shop.com — noticed increased consumer complaints regarding unauthorized charges and began to make inquiries. Greenberg provided inconsistent explanations to each company. Thus, Greenberg told a TRUSTe compliance officer that the charges were due to a computer glitch that had occurred over the Fourth of July weekend, affecting “at most 100 consumers,” all of whom had been or would be given chargebacks. 9 App’x 261.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. Runner
143 F.4th 146 (Second Circuit, 2025)
United States v. Tompkins
Second Circuit, 2024
United States v. Cesiro
Second Circuit, 2024
Acklin v. Eichner
S.D. New York, 2024
United States v. Saint Clair
Second Circuit, 2024
United States v. Moshe Porat
76 F.4th 213 (Third Circuit, 2023)
Black v. Ganieva
S.D. New York, 2022
El Omari v. Buchanan
S.D. New York, 2021
United States v. Percoco
13 F.4th 158 (Second Circuit, 2021)
United States v. Wedd
993 F.3d 104 (Second Circuit, 2021)
United States v. Walker
974 F.3d 193 (Second Circuit, 2020)
United States v. James Miller
953 F.3d 1095 (Ninth Circuit, 2020)
Jones v. United States
Federal Claims, 2020
Tchatat v. City of New York
Second Circuit, 2019

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
835 F.3d 295, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 16085, 2016 WL 4536514, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-greenberg-ca2-2016.