In the United States Court of Appeals FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

AUGUST TERM 2023 No. 22-533

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee,

v.

LAURIE WEINLEIN, Defendant-Appellant.

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York

SUBMITTED: NOVEMBER 30, 2023 DECIDED: JULY 25, 2024

Before: LYNCH, PARK, and MENASHI, Circuit Judges.

Defendant-Appellant Laurie Weinlein was convicted of bank fraud and embezzlement from an employee benefit plan and sentenced to sixty-three months in prison, a five-year term of supervised release, and over $2 million in restitution payments. At the time Weinlein committed her crimes, the Victim and Witness Protection Act (“VWPA”) provided that a criminal restitution obligation terminated twenty years from the date of judgment. In 1996, Congress enacted the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (“MVRA”), which extended the enforcement period for restitution orders. In 2021, in response to a subpoena from the government seeking information on her finances and her ability to pay restitution, Weinlein moved to terminate her restitution obligation. She argued that the VWPA’s enforcement period had expired and that retroactively applying the longer MVRA enforcement period to allow the government to collect further restitution payments would violate the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution. The district court denied Weinlein’s motion. We affirm the judgment of the district court.

Judge Menashi concurs in a separate opinion.

Adam J. Katz, John D. Hoggan, and Steven D. Clymer, Assistant United States Attorneys, for Carla B. Freedman, United States Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Syracuse, New York, for Appellee.

Samuel C. Breslin, Breslin Law Group, Albany, New York, for Defendant-Appellant.

MENASHI, Circuit Judge:

Defendant-Appellant Laurie Weinlein was convicted of bank fraud and embezzlement from an employee welfare benefit plan in 2000.1 She was sentenced to sixty-three months in prison and a five- year term of supervised release and was assessed over $2 million in

1 Weinlein now uses the surname “Black.” The parties refer to her by the name “Weinlein” in the briefing, however, so we do as well.

2 restitution payments. Weinlein committed the underlying criminal acts in 1994 and 1995. In 1996, Congress enacted the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (“MVRA”), which extended the enforcement period for criminal restitution obligations provided by 18 U.S.C. § 3613(b). Under the predecessor statute of the MVRA, the Victim and Witness Protection Act (“VWPA”), Weinlein’s restitution obligations would have terminated in 2020. Weinlein argues that applying the MVRA’s enforcement period retroactively to allow the government to continue to collect restitution payments from her violates the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution. We disagree and affirm the judgment of the district court.

BACKGROUND

In 1989, Weinlein founded American Payroll Network, Inc. (“APN”), an employee leasing business based in Albany, New York. APN managed payroll, taxes, insurance, and other back-office functions for small companies. To do so, APN would take its customers’ employees onto its own payroll, manage their taxes, insurance, and other back-office functions, and then lease the employees back to the customers, receiving a fee in return for these services.

APN maintained several bank accounts at two different banks—Marine Midland Bank and Key Bank. The company used these acc