U.S.A. v. Diarra, Crim. No. 19-392 (U.S.D.C.). The defendant pled guilty to $108,000,000 conspiracy to commit wire fraud, counterfeit access device fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering for participating in a conspiracy that was alleged to have purchased large blocks of thousands of stolen credit card and bank card numbers from websites overseas, using Bitcoin, Western Union, Moneygram and other methods to pay for the cards, then re-encoding the cards for subsequent fraudulent use. The government and the Probation Department’s Presentence Investigation Report claimed losses in the amount of $107,550,361. Ms. Lefeber successfully argued very recent Third Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court decisions (Kirschner, Nasir, Xue and Kisor) that persuaded the Judge that the amount of loss was only $60,000.

That winning argument reduced the defendant’s sentencing guidelines from 24-37 years’ imprisonment (286-447 months) to 61 months.