United States v. Henoud

28 F.3d 1211, 1994 U.S. App. LEXIS 24683, 1994 WL 369485
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedJuly 15, 1994
Docket93-5418
StatusUnpublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 28 F.3d 1211 (United States v. Henoud) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth 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. Henoud, 28 F.3d 1211, 1994 U.S. App. LEXIS 24683, 1994 WL 369485 (4th Cir. 1994).

Opinion

28 F.3d 1211

NOTICE: Fourth Circuit I.O.P. 36.6 states that citation of unpublished dispositions is disfavored except for establishing res judicata, estoppel, or the law of the case and requires service of copies of cited unpublished dispositions of the Fourth Circuit.
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
John Maurice HENOUD, a/k/a Jeffrey Berg, Jr., a/k/a Jerry M.
Davidson, a/k/a Gerry G. Davidson, a/k/a Gerry Davidson,
a/k/a J.D. Chapman, aka Jay Chapman, a/k/a Alex Reyes, a/k/a
Jerry Davis, a/k/a V.J. Gupta, a/k/a Jerry G. Davidson,
Defendant-Appellant.

No. 93-5418.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued April 14, 1994.
Decided July 15, 1994.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Norfolk. J. Calvitt Clarke, Jr., Senior District Judge. (CR-92-183-N)

Argued Lloyd Foster Sammons, Sammons & Smith, Alexandria, VA, for appellant.

George Maralan Kelley, III, Asst. U.S. Atty., Norfolk, VA, for appellee.

On Brief Helen F. Fahey, U.S. Atty., Norfolk, VA, for appellee.

E.D.Va.

AFFIRMED IN PART, VACATED IN PART, AND REMANDED.

Before WIDENER and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, and TURK, United States District Judge for the Western District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

OPINION

PER CURIAM:

John Maurice Henoud1 appeals his convictions for conspiracy to defraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 371 (1988), fraud in connection with access devices, in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. Sec. 1029(a)(2) (West Supp.1994), and twelve counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. Sec. 1343 (West Supp.1994). The district court sentenced him to a consolidated fifty-seven month term of imprisonment and imposed restitution in the amount of $24,338.23. Henoud raises several allegations of reversible error, including admission of evidence ruled inadmissible at a pretrial hearing, ineffective assistance of counsel, sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the convictions, absence of factual findings required for the imposition of restitution, and assessment of the "organizer or leader" sentencing enhancement.2 Finding no error, we affirm Henoud's convictions and sentence. However, because the record reveals three conflicting total loss figures resulting from Henoud's activities, we vacate the restitution portion of the final judgment and remand for further proceedings to determine the actual amount of restitution owed.

I.

Henoud was convicted of defrauding several American long-distance telephone companies by establishing and operating a call-sell fraud scheme or "Amigo scam."3 His scheme operated out of Suite 204, 405 South Parliament Drive, Virginia Beach, Virginia (the "Parliament Drive" location), between September 16 and 25, 1992. Henoud surreptitiously leased Suites 204 and 207 at the Parliament Drive location through two unknown individuals who identified themselves to the owner of the suites as Jerry Davis and Alex Reyes. He then obtained telephone service in those offices with fictitious Social Security numbers, business names, and contact telephone numbers. Using five phone lines, he established and maintained multi-hour "trunk lines" to Turkey, Cyprus, and Lebanon which allowed him to connect calls from those countries to any country in the world. On September 22, 1992, alone, one line was connected to a single Turkish number for twelve hours and fourteen minutes in a fourteen-hour span, and three of the lines were connected for a total of forty-seven hours. Henoud never paid the service installation or toll charges incurred at the Parliament Drive location, resulting in a stipulated total loss to five American phone companies--AT & T, Sprint, Metro Media, Allnet, and Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company (C & P)--of $24,442.53. However, there was no evidence of a bill for those expenses being issued before his September 25, 1992, arrest.

Although Henoud had not yet defaulted on expenses incurred at the Parliament Drive location, Secret Service agents suspected criminal conduct based on similar incidents, involving Henoud and an identical modus operandi, between September 2 and 8, 1992, at 3707 Virginia Beach Boulevard in Virginia Beach (the "Virginia Beach Boulevard" location), and during the 1992 Fourth of July weekend in Forrestville, Maryland (the "Forrestville" location), both of which resulted in thousands of dollars in unpaid toll charges. A search warrant for the sparsely-furnished Parliament Drive location yielded a folding table containing five telephones, a napkin and various notepads containing numbers that corresponded to phone numbers on that location's toll records, and steno pads with numbers that corresponded to the temporal duration of calls on those toll records. The phones, each with its own number, were connected to a single "junction box"; foreign language conversations were being conducted on those phone lines at the time of the search. Incident to his arrest, Henoud's person and his car were consensually searched, revealing various items linking him with the Virginia Beach Boulevard location and Suites 204 and 207 of the Parliament location.4 In addition to the items recovered in those searches, the Government's evidence at trial included the testimony of Michael Washington, who had been arrested at the Parliament Drive location with Henoud.5 Washington testified that Henoud had invited him to Virginia Beach to "answer phones." (J.A. at 462.) Upon arrival in Virginia Beach, they went to the house of Gene Gibson. Gibson gave Henoud a canvas bag, subsequently identified by Washington as the bag discovered in Henoud's car, which contained the phones, tools, and wiring used in Suite 204. After setting up the phones at the Parliament Drive location, Henoud, speaking in a foreign language, began a four-day marathon of making and receiving calls to and from persons also speaking in foreign languages, noting the duration of each call on the legal pads, and calculating his forthcoming profits on the steno pad. Washington's inability to speak a foreign language precluded him from working the phones and resulted in his relegation to running errands and retrieving food for Henoud. Henoud indicated to Washington his intent to move the operation to Suite 207 the following week because he did not want anyone to know the location of his business.

Other evidence included the testimony of Paul Weber, the tenant at the Forrestville location who sublet an office to Henoud. Weber testified that he had once discovered Henoud and a person identified only as "Eli" using six phone lines, installed without Weber's permission in an area not part of the subleased space, conducting long-distance calls in foreign languages and writing numbers on legal pads. Henoud abandoned that location soon thereafter without paying rent and took the phones with him.

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Related

United States v. Henoud
81 F.3d 484 (Fourth Circuit, 1996)

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Bluebook (online)
28 F.3d 1211, 1994 U.S. App. LEXIS 24683, 1994 WL 369485, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-henoud-ca4-1994.