Waiver of Right to Appeal Effective

Insurance Agent Defrauded Clients by Taking Premium Money and Keeping it for Personal Expenses

Barry Zalma

Dec 20, 2023

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FACTS

From February 2017 through May 2019, Taylor-Sanders took advantage of her role as a licensed insurance agent to defraud several trucking companies and the insurance finance company BankDirect Capital Finance. She defrauded the trucking companies by misappropriating funds that the companies provided her to pay for their insurance policy premiums and BankDirect Capital Finance by obtaining loans under the guise of nonexistent insurance policies. Instead of using the funds she obtained to pay insurance policy premiums or to pay back BankDirect Capital Finance for the legitimate loans it made to the trucking companies, Taylor-Sanders spent the funds on personal expenditures including cars, football tickets, and mortgage payments.

Predictably, some of the trucking companies’ insurance policies lapsed because Taylor-Sanders did not pay the insurance premiums.

Her scheme unraveled when one trucking company, DW Express, discovered its insurance policy was canceled for nonpayment after it tried to file a claim for an April 2019 trucking accident. Taylor-Sanders signed a plea agreement, under which she agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud (Count Four). She also agreed to pay “full restitution, regardless of the resulting loss amount, to all victims directly or indirectly harmed by [her] ‘relevant conduct,’ . . . including conduct pertaining to any dismissed counts or uncharged conduct, regardless of whether such conduct constitutes an ‘offense’ …” And she “waive[d] all rights to contest the conviction and sentence in any appeal” on any grounds other than ineffective assistance of counsel or prosecutorial misconduct.

In exchange, the Government agreed to dismiss all the remaining counts against her. After this colloquy, the magistrate judge found that Taylor-Sanders’s plea was knowing and voluntary and that Taylor-Sanders understood the charges and potential penalties and consequences of her plea.

Four months later Taylor-Sanders moved to withdraw her guilty plea, asserting “she was told she had no choice but to plead guilty” and that “her plea was not knowing and voluntary because ‘she did not fully understand the interplay between what her guideline range could be versus the final sentence.'”

On March 10, 2021, the district court ordered Taylor-Sanders to pay restitution in the amounts the Government requested.

ANALYSIS

The magistrate judge conducted a proper Rule 11 colloquy. The magistrate judge confirmed that Taylor-Sanders had reviewed the charge with counsel, understood the contents and possible consequences of her plea agreement, and was voluntarily pleading guilty. When Taylor-Sanders twice expressed concerns about the plea agreement or factual basis document, the magistrate judge provided a recess for her to convene with counsel and make any necessary changes to the plea agreement before proceeding. Taylor-Sanders’s appeal waiver was valid.

The restitution order included $139,847.09 for a year of DW Express’s lost profits. Since Taylor-Sanders did not dispute that the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act permits restitution. The Fourth Circuit concluded that each of Taylor-Sanders’s claims on appeal are barred by the appeal waiver in her guilty plea. Therefore, her appeal was dismissed.

ZALMA OPINION

Fraud perpetrators have no honor. Even after obtaining a plea agreement that saved her years in prison, Taylor-Sanders took up the time of the District Court and the Fourth Circuit to hear a spurious motion to withdraw her guilty plea after knowingly entering into the plea agreement and waiving her right to appeal. She will pay restitution and spend an appropriate time in jail.