United States v. Kuc

• Decision Date: 10 December 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–2496.,12–2496.
• Citation: 737 F.3d 129
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Matthew J. KUC, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

737 F.3d 129

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Matthew J. KUC, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 12–2496.

United States Court of Appeals,First Circuit.

Dec. 10, 2013.

Dana A. Curhan, for appellant.

Mark T. Quinlivan, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Carmen M. Ortiz, United States Attorney, was on brief for appellee.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and THOMPSON, Circuit Judges.

TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge.

Defendant–Appellant Matthew J. Kuc (“Kuc”) was indicted for fraudulently obtaining computer parts and selling them for profit. After a four-day jury trial, Kuc was convicted of four counts of wire fraud, one count of possession of stolen property, and one count of aggravated identity theft. On appeal, Kuc presents two claims: 1) the search warrant was defective because it violated the Fourth Amendment's particularity requirement, and 2) the evidence was insufficient to convict Kuc of aggravated identity theft. Neither claim has merit, and for the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I. Background

Because Kuc challenges the sufficiency of the evidence against him, “we rehearse the facts in the light most favorable to the jury verdict, consistent with record support.” United States v. Valerio, 676 F.3d 237, 240–41 (1st Cir.2012) (citations omitted).

A. Kuc's Fraudulent Scheme

From June 1, 2005 until December 14, 2010, Kuc engaged in a fraudulent scheme to obtain computer parts from several computer companies, including Dell, 3Com, Hewlett–Packard, and Lenovo. He would begin by contacting a computer company via telephone or online chat session, claiming that he needed a replacement part for a defective computer component that was under warranty. As proof, Kuc would provide the company with a serial number or service tag that belonged to a real piece of computer equipment under warranty. The company would then mail Kuc a free replacement part with the expectation that he would return the defective part upon receipt, but in most instances, Kuc failed to do so. This is because Kuc neither owned nor had the right to service the components that he falsely claimed were defective. Instead, he manipulated the companies' warranty procedures to receive free “replacement” computer parts, including tape drives, motherboards, hard drives, and processors, which he subsequently sold online for profit.

To prevent the companies from detecting his fraudulent activities, Kuc used multiple shipping addresses when requesting replacement parts. In addition, Kuc utilized a variety of alternate spellings of each address, such as “3–6 Laurelwood Drive” and “36 Louralwood Drive.” Each version was sufficiently different to slip through the companies' internal fraud-detection system but sufficiently similar to a real address that deliveries would still arrive at their intended destination. Kuc also used hundreds of aliases, such as “Tadeusz Tadeusz,” “Ray Di Ciaccio,” and “Sue Parchesco,” to request the warranty replacement parts. Additionally, he used alternate spellings of his own and other names, such as “Matt Kook,” “Matt Kuk,” and “Matt Cook.”

One of the names that Kuc used on numerous occasions was Francisco Samuel (“Samuel”). Samuel, a business associate of Kuc, gave Kuc permission to deliver packages to Samuel's business at 42 Union Street in Attleboro, Massachusetts because Kuc told Samuel that no one was present to accept morning deliveries at Kuc's place of employment. Samuel and Kuc did not discuss the use of Samuel's name on the packages, and Samuel did not know about Kuc's fraudulent scheme. Nevertheless, Kuc used Samuel's name and variations of Samuel's name, together with variations of the name of Samuel's company, to receive computer parts at 42 Union Street and other addresses.

Once Kuc received the “replacement” computer equipment, he sold the parts online through a business he called Total Asset Recovery. In total, Kuc received in excess of $3,576,000 worth of replacement parts from computer companies, and he made a total of $1,322,066 from online sales.¹

B. The Search of Kuc's Residence

The North Attleboro Police Department initially learned of Kuc's scheme in 2009 from investigators who were working for one of the defrauded computer companies. In 2010, Special Agent Kenneth Heitkamp of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working in concert with the North Attleboro police, discovered that Kuc was selling parts from other computer manufacturers as well. On December 10, 2010, Agent Heitkamp applied for and received a warrant to search Kuc's residence. The search warrant specified the location to be searched and authorized the seizure of:

All records, in whatever form, and tangible objects that constitute evidence, fruits, and instrumentalities of violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343 (wire fraud), 2314 (interstate transportation of stolen property), 2315 (storage and sale of stolen property in interstate commerce), and 2 (aiding and abetting), including, without limitation: [list of twenty-three categories of items].

On December 14, 2010, agents searched Kuc's residence and seized over 170 boxes of computer parts with markings from Dell, 3COM, Lenovo, and Hewlett–Packard. Agents also seized a notebook and computer files containing lists of different names, companies, and addresses that Kuc had used to receive computer parts. A forensic examiner later discovered computer files with scripted chat conversations that Kuc had used to request replacement parts.

On March 1, 2012, Kuc filed a motion to suppress the fruits of the search warrant, arguing that it violated the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment. On June 14, 2012, the district court denied the motion, and the evidence taken from Kuc's residence was admitted at trial. Ultimately, the jury convicted Kuc of four counts of wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343; one count of receipt, possession, and storage of stolen property in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2315; and one count of aggravated identity theft, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1028A.

II. Analysis

Kuc makes two claims of error on appeal. First, he argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress the fruits of an invalid search warrant. Second, he claims that the court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal on the aggravated identity theft charge. We take each claim in turn.

A. The Motion to Suppress

When reviewing a district court's denial of a motion to suppress, we review factual findings for clear error and legal conclusions de novo. United States v. Crooker, 688 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir.2012). If “any reasonable view of the evidence supports the decision,” we must affirm. United States v. Tiem Trinh, 665 F.3d 1, 9 (1st Cir.2011) (quoting United States v. Woodbury, 511 F.3d 93, 97 (1st Cir.2007)).

Kuc argues that the search warrant violated the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment because it contained broad language and provided effectively no limitations on the scope of the search. To support this claim, he relies on the first paragraph of the warrant's text, which authorizes the seizure of “[a]ll records ... and tangible objects that constitute evidence, fruits, and instrumentalities of violations of [specified criminal statutes] including, without limitation,” certain enumerated categories of items.² The language “including, without limitation,” is—according to Kuc—evidence that this was a general warrant contravening the Fourth Amendment's requirement that warrants must “particularly describ[e] the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. The references to certain criminal statutes cannot save the warrant, Kuc adds, because a general warrant limited only by reference to a broad criminal statute has “no limitation at all.” See United States v. Roche, 614 F.2d 6, 8 (1st Cir.1980) (finding that search warrant violated particularity requirement where its only limitation was a reference to the mail fraud statute).

Kuc is certainly correct insofar as he argues that general warrants “authoriz[ing] the wholesale rummaging through a person's property” are invalid. United States v. Upham, 168 F.3d 532, 535 (1st Cir.1999). The particularity requirement demands that a valid warrant: (1) must supply enough information to guide and control the executing agent's judgment in selecting where to search and what to seize, and (2) cannot be too broad in the sense that it includes items that should not be seized. Id.; see also United States v. Abrams, 615 F.2d 541, 545–46 (1st Cir.1980). Despite Kuc's assertions to the contrary, however, the warrant in this case did not run afoul of the particularity requirement.

Kuc's argument misses the mark because he reads the warrant's first clause in isolation. We recognized long ago that a warrant's language must be read in context, such that “the ‘general’ tail of the search warrant will be construed so as not to defeat the ‘particularity’ of the main body of the warrant.” Abrams, 615 F.2d at 547 (citing Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 480–81, 96 S.Ct. 2737, 49 L.Ed.2d 627 (1976)). In Andresen, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that an otherwise valid warrant was rendered impermissibly general by the addition of the phrase “together with other fruits, instrumentalities, and evidence of crime at this (time unknown),” because the phrase had to be read in context and together with the warrant's “lengthy list of specified and particular items to be seized.” 427 U.S. at 479–81, 96 S.Ct. 2737. Similarly, in United States v. Bucuvalas, 970 F.2d 937 (1st Cir.1992), abrogated on other grounds by Cleveland v. United States, 531 U.S. 12, 18, 121 S.Ct. 365, 148 L.Ed.2d 221 (2000), this court upheld a warrant that authorized the seizure of “[r]ecords, documents, notes and physical objects which constitute evidence of and instrumentalities of [four specified crimes], and, in particular, records, documents, notes and physical objects [evidencing...