CA4: To “follow the money” in a complex fraud case, a broad SW for records is required

In a complex mail and wire fraud and securities investigation, the search warrant for a large volume of records was not overbroad. It necessarily had to be to “follow the money.” United States v. Phillips, 588 F.3d 218 (4th Cir. 2009):

Indeed, especially in cases such as this one–involving complex crime schemes, with interwoven frauds — courts have routinely upheld the seizure of items described under a warrant’s broad and inclusive language. See, e.g., United States v. Jacob, 657 F.2d 49, 52 (4th Cir. 1981). For example, in Andresen v. Maryland, the Supreme Court upheld the seizure of an extensive array of documents under a warrant that authorized the seizure of items “together with other fruits, instrumentalities and evidence of crime at this [time] unknown.” 427 U.S. 463, 479, 96 S. Ct. 2737, 49 L. Ed. 2d 627 (1976). This circuit has similarly allowed the seizure of a “broad range of things” on the basis of language permitting officers to seize “fruits, evidence and instrumentalities of false claims submissions” and items “including, but not limited to” business records. Srivastava, 540 F.3d at 280, 289. The warrant in the case at bar bears striking similarities to those upheld in the aforementioned precedent.

The rationale for these holdings is straightforward. In cases of this sort, investigators must “follow the money” to gradually unravel the lengthy paper trail left by a defendant’s illegal operations. See Srivastava, 540 F.3d at 291-92. As the Supreme Court explained, complex fraud cases often require investigators to assemble a “jigsaw puzzle” by piecing together “many bits of evidence” that, “taken singly, would show comparatively little.” Andresen, 427 U.S. at 480-81, n. 10. For “in the context of a fraud investigation, the relevant evidence will in many instances be fragmentary, discovered in bits and pieces, and thus difficult to either identify or secure. Standing alone, a particular document may appear innocuous or entirely innocent, and yet be an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle that investigators must assemble.” Srivastava, 540 F.3d at 291. In choosing to uphold contested seizures pursuant to inclusive language, courts have insisted that the “complexity of an illegal scheme may not be used as a shield to avoid detection.” Andresen, 427 U.S. at 480-81, n.10; see also Srivastava, 540 F.3d at 291.

We thus decline to allow Phillips to create a safe harbor from the complexity of his schemes. His crimes were multiple and intricate. Phillips perpetrated his crimes in-person, by U.S. mail, by telephone, and on the Internet. He lied about his name, income, and social security number; he used a fake driver’s license; he ran up costly bills with fraudulent credit cards that he never paid off; he funded a gambling habit with a stolen identity; and he wrote countless bad checks. To investigate and prosecute crimes of this nature, the government may need a diverse and extensive set of documents at its disposal. The language of the warrant anticipates that very possibility. The warrant thus sufficiently authorized the seizure of the contested evidence here, even if that evidence was not specifically listed and meticulously described.