No. 23-1159

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

RANDALL CRATER,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Denise J. Casper, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Gelpí, Howard, and Rikelman, Circuit Judges.

Scott P. Lopez, with whom Lawson & Weitzen, LLP was on brief, for appellant.

David M. Lieberman, Attorney, Criminal Division, Appellate Section, with whom Joshua S. Levy, Acting United States Attorney, Donald C. Lockhart, Appellate Chief, Christopher J. Markham, Assistant United States Attorney, District of Massachusetts, Nicole M. Argentieri, Acting Assistant Attorney General, and Lisa H. Miller, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, were on brief, for appellee. February 23, 2024 RIKELMAN, Circuit Judge. After an eight-day trial, a jury convicted Randall Crater of wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions, and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business based on his involvement in a cryptocurrency scheme. On appeal, Crater challenges two of the district court's trial rulings. First, Crater argues that the district court violated his Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process by refusing to enforce subpoenas against three federal agency witnesses on the ground that Crater had failed to comply with the agencies' Touhy regulations. Second, Crater contends that the district court abdicated its gatekeeping duty by admitting testimony from the government's cryptocurrency expert without conducting a Daubert hearing. Because Crater's arguments cannot be squared with controlling precedent or the record in this case, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Relevant Facts

We begin with the facts, recounted in the "light most favorable to the verdict." United States v. Guerrero-Narváez, 29 F.4th 1, 5 (1st Cir. 2022).

In the early 2010s, interest in cryptocurrency was rapidly growing. The first well-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, rose in value from less than one dollar in 2010 to nearly $100 per coin in 2013. That same year, Randall Crater took advantage of the market by launching My Big Coin (MBC), a new virtual currency

- 3 - and company. Crater credited himself as MBC's "Creator/Developer" on LinkedIn, and his colleague John Roche served as the company's chief executive officer.

MBC implicitly touted its similarities to Bitcoin on its website and social media pages. Like Bitcoin, MBC was purportedly a "virtual currency" that could be mined, bought, sold, traded, saved, donated, or "sen[t] to friends and family around the world." But MBC also claimed several unique features. First, MBC's virtual currency ostensibly was "backed 100 percent by gold." Second, MBC claimed to have a partnership with Mastercard, which would allow coin-holders to "buy stuff all over the world" using a Mastercard linked to their MBC account.

Crater also emphasized these unique features on his own social media and in communications with potential customers. On LinkedIn, he boasted that MBC was "the only cryptocurrency to be backed by gold" and that "[w]e are partners with Mastercard, which gives us a closed loop system so your [sic] able to brake [sic] down into any currency that's needed!" In an email to one customer, he wrote that "we have 300 million in gold backing us." To another, he wrote that a bank in Spain held "100 million dollars in my name in gold." Crater also told potential customers about MBC's "elite deal"