The three last week lost a Federal Appeals Court case
involving sentences they received for fencing high-end stolen goods.
Their sentences were 12 years in prison (Ms. Sandoval, the ringleader),
40 months (Ms. Hicks) and 21 months (Mr. Vanderhack). And while the
legal matter involved how one interprets sentencing guidelines, their
misdeeds should make you pause the next time you give out your credit
card numbers.
Ms. Sandoval, Ms. Hicks and Mr. Vanderhack managed to steal card
information from right under the noses of retailers like Neiman Marcus,
Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue and fraudulently ordered
merchandise that they then kept, resold or returned for cash or
merchandise credit.
They stole what are known as clientele books from high-end stores. Those
books include information on valued customers like “their names,
addresses, clothing preferences, birthday, and, most importantly, credit
card numbers,” according to the appeal.
It seems to have been shockingly easy to pilfer the information, with
Ms. Hicks acting as lookout. The posse would use the card numbers to
order many thousands of dollars of merchandise and arrange for items to
be either held for pickup or express shipped to destinations.
Judges Frank Easterbrook, Diane Sykes and Ilana Rovner handled the
appeal, and Ms. Rovner wrote the opinion. “Depending on the package
delivery methods, the defendants would pick it up from the store, steal
it from the porch of the delivery address (often the victim herself), or
intercept the delivery person and claim to be the intended recipient,”
wrote Ms. Rovner.
After that, they either fenced the goods at discounted prices or brazenly returned them to the store for cash or credit.
Saks was suspicious when Ms. Sandoval ordered $5,000 worth of goods
using Susan Schweiger’s card information. It contacted Mrs. Schweiger
and stopped delivery. She and her husband placed a decoy box on their
front porch, and later spotted Mr. Vanderhack walking by and talking on
his cellphone.
Ms. Sandoval’s appeal of her sentence is illuminating in informing us
who is defined by the law as a victim these days. Before 2009, it was
only someone who suffered a financial loss. Now it’s not just pecuniary
harm but also anybody “whose means of identification was used unlawfully
or without authority.”
That means that her victims were not just the 40 stores and credit card
companies that sustained losses but also the 65 people whose cards were
used.
•
Another big holiday loser is ATA Airlines
Inc., now defunct, which saw a panel of Mr. Easterbrook, Richard Posner
and Diane Wood reverse a $65,998,411 judgment against the Federal
Express Corporation and do some vivid, derisive finger-wagging about the
key expert’s testimony.
The case involved the substantial passenger and cargo services that
commercial airlines provided the military in the Civil Reserve Air
Fleet. FedEx was the leader of one team, which included ATA. The
airline’s share of the team’s revenues peaked at $406 million in 2005,
with its profits exceeding $90 million.
FedEx dropped ATA from the team in 2008 — a change “pregnant with
menace,” Mr. Posner wrote — and largely prompted its bankruptcy and
breach-of-contract suit.
But the panel did not believe the claim should have ever gone to trial
and eviscerated ATA’s forensic accountant, Lawrence Morriss. Mr. Posner
concluded that neither side’s lawyers — and, by clear implication,
Richard Young, the chief federal judge in Indianapolis — had understood
Mr. Morris’s dubious regression analysis in assessing ATA’s damages and,
if they did, “are unable to communicate their understanding in plain
English.”
“Morriss’s regression had as many bloody wounds as Julius Caesar when he
was stabbed 23 times by the Roman senators led by Brutus,” Mr. Posner
said.
•
It isn’t smart for a lawyer to blow a deadline in filing a client’s
appeal, even if there are extenuating circumstances. But those
apparently don’t include running for governor of Illinois.
Rich Whitney, a Carbondale lawyer and Green Party candidate for governor
in 2010, persuaded a lower-court judge to cut him slack and extend a
deadline he had missed soon after the election. An appeals panel of Mr.
Posner, Richard Cudahy and Ann Williams reversed that, with Ms. William
writing:
“Many practicing attorneys run for office or submit themselves for
consideration for positions on nonprofit boards or bar associations but
cannot do so to the detriment of their clients.”
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