U.S. v. Lee

Record contained sufficient evidence to support jury’s guilty verdict on wire fraud charge, arising out of defendant’s scheme, where defendant and two White Sox employees obtained either discounted or free White Sox tickets and then defendant sold said tickets on StubHub. Instant scheme, which lasted for three years netted defendant $867,269 minus $74,650 that he paid White Sox for $5.00 discounted tickets (and paid nothing for free tickets) and $105,000 that he paid two White Sox employees. Instant indictment was not improperly duplicitous, even though it arguably alleged two schemes, i.e. to obtain and then sell said tickets, where both activities were necessary to succeed in goal of profiting at expense of White Sox. Also, record showed that wire transfers played role in scheme, where defendant used wire transfers to obtain status of ticket sales from StubHub. Fact that White Sox did not have monitoring system to keep track of free or discounted tickets did not make misrepresentations made by defendant to disguise his scheme immaterial. Dist. Ct. erred, though, in failing to amend written judgment to include $455,229.23 forfeiture order that it had been orally announced at sentencing hearing. Fact that Dist. Ct. had not entered preliminary forfeiture order pursuant to Rule 23.2(b)(1)(A) did not preclude Dist. Ct. from including forfeiture order in written judgment, where defendant had ample opportunity to litigate forfeiture issue, and Rule 36 otherwise allows Dist. Ct. to amend written judgment to correct instant clerical error at any time.