UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT ___________________________________

August Term, 2023

Argued: May 13, 2024 Decided: September 6, 2024

Docket Nos. 23-6559, 23-6608, 23-6609, 23-7875, 23-7882, 23-7887, 24-91 ___________________________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Appellee,

— v. —

JAMES SULLIVAN, JOHN BILDA, DREW RANKIN,

Defendants-Appellants,

EDWARD DEMUZZIO, EDWARD PRYOR,

Defendants. ___________________________________

In Re: CONNECTICUT MUNICIPAL ELECTRIC ENERGY COOPERATIVE,

Petitioner. ___________________________________ Before:

LYNCH, BIANCO, and KAHN, Circuit Judges. ___________________________________

Drew Rankin, James Sullivan, and John Bilda (“Defendants”) appeal from a judgment of conviction entered in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (Jeffrey A. Meyer, J.), following a trial at which the jury found Defendants guilty of one count of theft involving a program receiving federal funds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(1)(A). That count charged that Defendants, officers and executives of the Connecticut Municipal Electric Energy Cooperative (“CMEEC”), misappropriated funds from CMEEC in 2015 to pay for four personal vacations under the guise that those trips were corporate “retreats.” Defendants raise four claims of error on appeal. First, Defendants challenge the sufficiency of the evidence to support the jury’s finding that CMEEC received “benefits in excess of $10,000” in the charged one-year period, as required by the jurisdictional element of that offense. See 18 U.S.C. § 666(b). Second, Defendants claim that the government offered a frivolous theory as to which entity owned or had control of the stolen funds in order to charge Defendants with misappropriations of funds during the 2016 calendar year as part of other counts, one of which was voluntarily dismissed and the other of which Defendants were acquitted of, and that the inclusion of those counts caused Defendants spillover prejudice during their trial. Third, Defendants argue that the conviction should be vacated and the Indictment dismissed because the government purportedly misled the grand jury to believe that the trips were not approved by CMEEC’s Board, despite the fact that three of the four trips were charged to a line item in CMEEC’s annual budget. Fourth, Defendants argue that the district court erred in ordering restitution for the expenses arising from those three trips, and that those expenses should be excised from their restitution obligation. In addition, CMEEC petitions for mandamus pursuant to the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (“CVRA”), see 18 U.S.C. § 3771(a), seeking review of the district court’s restitution order under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (“MVRA”). CMEEC contends that the district court erred in concluding that no portion of the legal fees that CMEEC advanced to Defendants and their acquitted

2 co-defendants for their defense in the instant prosecution was compensable as a “loss . . . of property” under the MVRA. 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(b)(1). For the reasons set forth below, we reject each of these challenges. First, in 2015, CMEEC received $864,154.20 as the primary awardee of a federal grant program, and those funds are “benefits” within the meaning o