United States District Court, D. Colorado
ORDER DENYING MOTION TO SUPPRESS
William J. Martinez United States District Judge
The
Government charges Defendant with conspiracy to defraud the
United States (18 U.S.C. § 371), securities fraud (15
U.S.C. §§ 78j(b) & 78ff), wire fraud (18 U.S.C.
§ 1343), mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341), and money
laundering (18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(3)(B)). (See
ECF No. 113.) Before the Court is Defendant's Motion to
Suppress Evidence Obtained from Search of HP Laptop. (ECF No.
91.) Defendant does not request a hearing, and the Court
finds that a hearing would be unnecessary in any event. The
motion, the Government's response brief (ECF No. 104),
and the various attachments reveal no material factual
disputes and confirm that the dispute may be resolved as a
matter of law. See, e.g., United States v.
Chavez-Marquez, 66 F.3d 259, 261 (10th Cir. 1995)
(hearing not required unless defendant carries burden of
establishing disputed issues of material fact). For the
reasons explained below, the Court denies the motion.
I.
BACKGROUND
The
Government began investigating Defendant and his associates
in December 2013. (ECF No. 104-2 at 3, ¶ 2.) As to
Defendant specifically, the Government suspected him of
falsifying documents that his associates needed to convert
restricted stock into free-trading stock on the
over-the-counter (“OTC”) market. (Id. at
7, ¶ 8.)
Police
officers in Miami, Florida, arrested Defendant on April 29,
2016. (See id. at 26-30, ¶¶ 43, 45, 52.)
At the time of his arrest, Defendant was carrying a backpack
containing a laptop computer. (Id. ¶ 52.)
Federal agents soon applied for and obtained a warrant from
the United States District Court for the Southern District of
Florida to search the laptop. The warrant's
“Description Of Items To Be Searched And Seized,
” also known as “Attachment B, ” begins as
follows:
The following items and information related to the scheme and
activities that are described and are the subject of the
affidavit in support of this warrant (which affidavit is
incorporated by reference herein), which items constitute
evidence and/or instrumentalities of violations of Title 18
United States Code, Sections 371 [conspiracy to defraud the
United States], 1341 [mail fraud], 1343 [wire fraud], 1956
[money laundering], 1957 [knowingly transacting with money
derived from unlawful activity] and 2 [the general conspiracy
statute], and the following items relating to the electronic
storage, access and retrieval of such items . . . .
(ECF No. 91-2 at 4.) There follows twenty paragraphs of
varying specificity regarding items to be seized. Some of
these paragraphs describe very specific categories with an
obvious relation to the case, such as “written
submissions to OTC [m]arkets.” (Id. at 5.)
Other paragraphs describe relatively generic categories, such
as:
Bank records, including bank statements . . .;
All computer files that act as “address books” or
other list[s] of correspondence and contacts; Records and
information related to foreign and domestic travel.
Records of Internet activity . . . .
(Id.)
The
Government represents that, upon receiving the signed search
warrant, it transported the laptop to Colorado and delivered
it and a copy of the warrant “to a forensic computer
examiner at the Rock[y] Mountain Regional Forensics
Laboratory.” (ECF No. 104 at 4.) Guided only by the
warrant, the examiner forensically searched the computer
“and copied computer files which only came within the
scope of Attachment B and provided those files to FBI agents
working on the case.” (Id.) On the record
before the Court, it is not clear what these computer files
revealed.
II.
BURDEN OF PROOF
“Generally,
if the search or seizure was pursuant to a warrant, the
defendant has the burden of [proving that the search violated
the Fourth Amendment].” United States v.
Carhee, 27 F.3d 1493, 1496 (10th Cir. 1994) (internal
quotation marks omitted). Defendant does not argue that his
motion ...