Case Explained: Non-Argument Calendar UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JULIAN LOPEZ

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Filed: 2026-08-07 Docket: 0:22-cr-60128-RAR-2 The eleventh-circuit vacated the defendant’s sentence and remanded the case for further proceedings because the government failed to present substantial evidence that the defendant agreed to jointly undertake a criminal activity with One Medical Services, the entity responsible for $3.2 million in fraudulent Medicare claims. Under U.S.S.G. § 1B1.3(a)(1)(B), a defendant is accountable for the acts of others only if those acts were within the scope of the jointly undertaken criminal activity, in furtherance of that activity, and reasonably foreseeable. The court held that while the defendant admitted to selling Medicare beneficiary cards knowing they would be used for fraud, the record contained no evidence of an explicit or implicit agreement between the defendant and One Medical Services to jointly undertake a multi-million dollar scheme. The court distinguished the case from *United States v. Whitman*, noting that a mere buyer-seller relationship or general awareness of a larger scheme is insufficient to impute the full scope of a co-conspirator’s conduct. Because the district court’s finding of a joint undertaking was clearly erroneous due to the lack of evidence, the defendant cannot be held responsible for the $3.2 million loss, and the sentence must be recalculated based only on the specific acts within his own agreed-upon scope. Do It For The Case Law is a news reporting service. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.