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Ben Hays | Stinson or Kisor: Which Applies when Interpreting Federal Sentencing Guidelines?

Oklean Jacob Ponle orchestrated a massive phishing scheme in 2019, leading to $8.03 million in actual losses and $51.3 million in intended losses to his victims. The scheme consisted of gaining unauthorized access to emails of company executives and using these emails to contact other employees with urgent demands to wire money, ostensibly for corporate needs, which ended up in the defendant’s pockets. Some of the wires were caught and reversed by banks; this is the source of the intended loss amount. After an FBI investigation and arrest, Ponle pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in federal court. In determining the range for his sentence, the district court consulted federal sentencing guidelines, which provide a different number of points added to a defendant’s base level depending on the monetary amount of loss.

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