United States v. Steve Angelica

Steve Angelica was convicted after a jury trial of 23 counts of mail and wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1343. He was sentenced to six years in custody, placed on five years consecutive probation, and ordered to pay $451,846 as restitution to his victims. The judgment requires immediate payment and is a condition of probation as well. We affirmed his convictions in a separate disposition. Here we consider Angelica’s challenges to his sentence of restitution.

BACKGROUND

Angelica oversaw the day-to-day operation of Kimberly International Gem Corporation (Kimberly) which used numerous high-pressure salesmen as part of a scheme to defraud clients of diamonds, cash and investment securities. One of Kimberly’s schemes was the so-called “diamond takeaway scheme,” devised by Angelica and his co-president Stephen Small. Angelica and Small provided Kimberly salesmen with a list of people who had previously purchased diamonds from other companies, together with a script laying out a variety of lies, misrepresentations and high-pressure sales tactics to persuade customers to mail in diamonds supposedly to be sold by Kimberly for a profit. The salesmen, including Angelica,…