United States v. Jeffrey Woronowicz

744 F.3d 848, 2014 WL 943272, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 4596
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedMarch 12, 2014
Docket12-4320
StatusPublished
Cited by33 cases

This text of 744 F.3d 848 (United States v. Jeffrey Woronowicz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third 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. Jeffrey Woronowicz, 744 F.3d 848, 2014 WL 943272, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 4596 (3d Cir. 2014).

Opinion

*850 OPINION

RENDELL, Circuit Judge:

Jeffrey Woronowicz challenges the 41-month term of imprisonment to which he was sentenced after pleading guilty to a one-count Indictment charging him with counterfeiting in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 474. Woronowicz urges that the District Court clearly erred in calculating the amount of counterfeit currency attributable to him under the Sentencing Guidelines, and that his sentence is procedurally and substantively unreasonable. For the reasons that follow, we will affirm. 1

I.

In 2008, Woronowicz was convicted of four counts of willful failure to file tax returns and was sentenced to a 12-month term of imprisonment with 1 year of supervised release. He failed to comply with the terms of his supervised release, resulting in an additional 3 months’ imprisonment. Woronowicz was allowed to self-surrender but failed to do so. After being arrested for failure to surrender, Woro-nowicz consented to have law enforcement officials search his residence. The officials discovered counterfeit currency with a face value in excess of $207,000. Approximately 90% of the bills found were completed on only one side, and $20,000 worth were completed on both sides. Authorities also discovered materials used to manufacture counterfeit currency. Woronowicz subsequently pleaded guilty to the one count Indictment charging him with counterfeiting.

At sentencing, the District Court applied a 12-level enhancement to Woronowicz’s Guidelines range, pursuant to § 2B5.1(b)(l)(B) based on its calculation of the face value of the counterfeit currency as exceeding $200,000. 2 The Court rejected Woronowicz’s argument that he should receive no more than a 4-level enhancement since only 10% of the counterfeited notes were fully completed. The Court calculated Woronowicz’s total offense level as 20 and his criminal history category as IV, .resulting in an advisory Guidelines range of 51 to 63 months. The Court varied downward, imposing a sentence of 41 months’ imprisonment, acknowledging that the fact that many of the bills were incomplete was a mitigating factor.

II.

A.

We review a District Court’s interpretation of the Sentencing Guidelines de novo and its application of the Guidelines to the facts for clear error. United States v. Richards, 674 F.3d 215, 218-20 (3d Cir.2012).

Under § 2B5.1(b)(l)(B), the Court is to impose a sentencing level enhancement based on “the face value of the counterfeit items.” United States v. Wright, 642 F.3d 148, 154 (3d Cir.2011). Here, Woronowicz concedes that the face value of the currency was $207,980 but urges that incomplete bills should not be counted as “counterfeit items.” He also raises arguments regarding intended loss, but we have clearly held that intended loss is irrelevant in imposing an enhancement under § 2B5.1(b)(l)(B). Wright, 642 F.3d at 154. 3 Though we have never explicitly *851 ruled on whether incomplete bills should be counted in arriving at face value under § 2B5.1(b)(l) of the Sentencing Guidelines, every other court of appeals that has addressed this question has held that they should. See United States v. Kelly, 204 F.3d 652, 657 (6th Cir.2000) (counting bills lacking seals and numbers under enhancement); United States v. Webster, 108 F.3d 1156, 1158 (9th Cir.1997) (counting uncut bills); United States v. Ramacci, 15 F.3d 75, 78 (7th Cir.1994) (counting one-sided bills); United States v. Lamere, 980 F.2d 506, 512-13 (8th Cir.1992) (counting one-sided bills). 4

Under § 2B5.1, a counterfeit item is defined as “an instrument that has been falsely made, manufactured, or altered.” U.S.S.G. § 2B5.1 cmt. n. 1. Note 3 of § 2B5.1 specifically excepts, “items that are so obviously counterfeit that they are unlikely to be accepted even if subjected to only minimal scrutiny,” Id. § 2B5.1 cmt. n.3, from being counted in connection with a different subsection of § 2B5.1(b)— namely (b)(2)(A). In United States v. Taftsiou, we held that the Sentencing Commission “unambiguously limited the reach of note [3] 5 to subsection (b)(2)” and that we were “not at liberty to extend its application to other subsections by judicial fiat alone.” 144 F.3d 287, 294 (3d Cir.1998). Therefore, we held that notes of unpassable quality do count towards the face value of counterfeit items under subsection (b)(1). Id. Incomplete bills are merely notes that could be considered to be of unpassable quality. Therefore, extending our holding in Taftsiou, we now hold that incomplete bills are “counterfeit items” under § 2B5.1(b)(l) and must be counted in calculating the total face value.

Woronowicz’s argument that there are an “abundance of cases wherein convictions for counterfeiting were reversed because the counterfeit bills were not of passable quality,” is misplaced. Appellant’s Br. 15. First, the cases he relies on involved a different statute from the one at issue here — 18 U.S.C. § 472 rather than § 474. See United States v. Ross, 844 F.2d 187 (4th Cir.1988); United States v. Johnson, 434 F.2d 827 (9th Cir.1970); United States v. Smith, 318 F.2d 94 (4th Cir.1963). Unlike § 472, § 474, prohibits the possession of currency made “in whole or in part, after the similitude” of U.S. currency. See Ross, 844 F.2d at 190. Second, the cases he cites involved challenges to convictions, not challenges to sentences. Woronowicz’s sentencing range is determined by the Sentencing Guidelines, not by the underlying counterfeiting statute.

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744 F.3d 848, 2014 WL 943272, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 4596, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-jeffrey-woronowicz-ca3-2014.