United States v. Thomas Sales

Defendant-appellant Thomas Sales appeals several conditions of supervised release imposed as part of his sentence, following his conviction by guilty plea for counterfeiting United States federal reserve notes.

I.

Between late December 2002 and mid-January 2003, Sales used his scanner and printer to make counterfeit currency: he scanned images of $20 bills into his computer and then printed the scanned images. Sales did so at the prompting of Dan Flynn, a friend who had a history of felony convictions for offenses including forgery. Sales had no prior criminal record. He had been self-employed repairing telephones, and installing cable lines, home alarm systems, and home computer networks.

Following his arrest and indictment, Sales pled guilty to scanning and recording digital images of United States currency in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 474 and creating counterfeit currency in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 471 . He was sentenced to an eight-month term of imprisonment, to be followed by four years of supervised release. Sales now challenges the following special conditions of supervised release imposed by the district court:

II.

Title 18 U.S.C. § 3583 sets forth the standards for…