Sentencing – Leader enhancement

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U.S. Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Sentencing – Leader enhancement

The district court property enhanced the defendant’s sentence for being a leader or organizer.

“Haywood’s contention that he wasn’t an organizer or leader is preposterous. He admitted processing the applications for the 65 fraudulent mortgage loans listed in Exhibit A to the plea agreement. He told Young what phony documents he wanted and what specific information to include in those documents. He recruited Persaud and told her what valuations to use in her inflated appraisals. He instructed DeAngelo McMahan to bring particular documents to a loan closing and to fax him documents to prepare loans. And he recruited and paid at least five ‘bird dogs’ to find ‘buyers’ for fraudulent loans. This was more than enough for the court to conclude that Haywood ‘had direction and control during the pertinent transactions over what the others did.’”

Affirmed.

13-3815 U.S. v. Haywood

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Guzmán, J., Manion, J.

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