United States v. May

568 F.3d 597, 103 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 2549, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 12334, 2009 WL 1586755
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit·Decided June 9, 2009·No. 07-3465·Published·Cited by 50 cases

Opinion

OPINION

JULIA SMITH GIBBONS, Circuit Judge.

Defendant Mark W. May appeals for the second time the sentence imposed by the district court upon his jury conviction for willfully evading his personal income tax liability, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7201, and failing to account for and pay over payroll taxes, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7202. The Bureau of Prisons released May on December 15, 2008; however, we find that his appeal is not moot. We further find that three of the multiple issues May raises on appeal have merit; therefore, we must vacate May’s sentence and remand this case once again to the district court for the purpose of considering whether May’s term of supervised release should be two or three years and the entry of an order of restitution reflecting the correct amount owed.

I.

May was the registered agent, majority shareholder, sole director, and president of Maranatha Financial Group, Inc., a fee-based financial advisory firm in Dayton, Ohio. Testimony at trial from numerous employees revealed that May kept a tight control on who could open the company’s mail. Specifically, no one but May himself could open any mail that appeared to originate from banks, government agencies, or law firms. As part of this strict control over company correspondence, May instructed Maranatha’s accountant to withhold the proper amount from employees’ paychecks but never authorized the accountant to write any checks to transfer these funds to the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”). No one other than May had the authority to sign checks for the company. When tax authorities commenced investigating Maranatha’s activities in March 1994, they discovered that the corporation had never filed either an income tax return or an employment tax return. The IRS further determined that May had failed to withhold taxes from his own paycheck but nonetheless had stated on his personal tax form that such funds had been withheld and paid to the government.

As the IRS investigation into Maranatha’s activities intensified, May decided to close Maranatha. On Friday, December 20, 1996, Maranatha effectively ceased operations. The next Monday, December 23, USA Financial opened in Dayton. USA Financial opened its offices in a new building but maintained almost exactly the same employees as Maranatha. The “new” firm provided the same fee-based financial planning services as its predecessor and used the same copyrighted documents that Maranatha had employed in its *601 financial planning programs. May required employees to send daily sales reports for USA Financial to his home. However, managers instructed employees that in the event anyone should call USA Financial and ask to speak to Mark May, the employees should respond “Mark who?” or otherwise indicate that no one by that name worked there. Craig Herl, who had served as a junior executive at Maranatha, was the titular president of USA Financial. Employees at USA Financial realized that despite the new letterhead, May “was the boss.” Trial Tr. at 172.

On April 9, 2002, a federal grand jury charged May with two counts of willfully evading his personal income tax liability for calendar years 1995 and 1996, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7201, and four counts of willfully failing to account for and pay over payroll taxes for the quarters ending April 30, July 31, and October 31, 1996, as well as January 31, 1997, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 7202. May entered a plea of not guilty on all counts and proceeded to trial. A jury convicted May of all six counts of the indictment on September 26, 2003. The district court conducted the original sentencing hearing on December 16, 2003. May made numerous objections to the sentencing and restitution calculations found in the Presentence Investigation ■ Report (“PSR”). The district court rejected May’s challenges and imposed a séntence of seventy-two months incarceration with three years of supervised release afterward and ordered May to pay $728,090 in restitution. May appealed to this court, and a unanimous panel affirmed May’s convictions but vacated the sentence so that the district court could resentence May in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). United States v. May, 174 Fed.Appx. 877, 878 (6th Cir.2006). We specifically refused to rule on any of May’s assignments of error in regard to his sentence and instead “urge[d May] to present those to the district court on remand.” Id. at 879.

On January 29, 2007, the district court held May’s resentencing hearing. Both in his pre-hearing motions and at the hearing itself, May objected to the calculations contained within the PSR. May objected to the grouping of the Section 7201 and Section 7202 offenses together, the calculation of the amount of taxes May evaded, the application of the sophisticated concealment enhancement under United States Sentencing Guidelines (“U.S.S.G.”) Section 2T1.1 (1995), 1 and the enhancement for abuse of a position of trust under Section 3B1.3. The district court rejected each of these challenges. On counts one through five, the court sentenced May to concurrent sixty month terms. On count six, the district court sentenced May to a consecutive term of six months for a total sentence of sixty-six months. May’s counsel stated that he objected to the proposed restitution terms found in the PSR but was not ready to argue those points at the sentencing hearing. The district court allowed May’s attorney to file a motion to reopen the judgment within ten days of the sentencing hearing to address these concerns. The government did not object to this procedure but did request that the district court place on the record that “the restitution is being applied as a condition of supervised release” to “clear up the legal issue.” Resentencing Tr. at 32. The district court so stated.

In his post-hearing motion to reopen the judgment, May alleged three assignments *602 of error as to the restitution calculations. The district court rejected these arguments and ordered May to pay $728,090 in restitution as a condition of supervised release. The district court further ordered the defendant “to pay on the outstanding balance owed to the Ohio Attorney General,” to refrain from having any association “with the Financial Services Industry, in any capacity whatsoever, except as a consumer,” and “to file, within the first 6 months of supervision, amended tax returns for all relevant years” as additional conditions of supervised release. Amended Judg. at 4. May timely filed his notice of appeal.

II.

A.

Pursuant to a December 29, 2008 order of this court, the parties were directed to file letter briefs addressing the question of whether May’s December 15 release from prison rendered any of his issues on appeal moot.

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United States v. May, 568 F.3d 597, 103 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 2549, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 12334, 2009 WL 1586755 (6th Cir. 2009).

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