UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________

No. 23-2110 _______________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

JOSEPH CAMMARATA, Appellant _______________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania District Court No. 2:21-cr-00427-001 District Judge: Honorable Chad F. Kenney __________________________

Argued September 19, 2024 Before: RESTREPO, McKEE, and SMITH, Circuit Judges

(Filed: February 24, 2025) Peter Goldberger [Argued] Law Office of Peter Goldberger P.O. Box 645 Ardmore, PA 19003 Counsel for Appellant David J. Ignall Paul G. Shapiro [Argued] Office of United States Attorney 615 Chestnut Street Suite 1250 Philadelphia, PA 19106 Counsel for Appellee

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OPINION OF THE COURT __________________________ SMITH, Circuit Judge. “The class action is an ingenious procedural innovation[,]” wrote Judge Richard Posner in Eubank v. Pella Corp., 753 F.3d 718, 719 (7th Cir. 2014). As he explained, it “enables persons who have suffered a wrongful injury, but are too numerous for joinder of their claims alleging the same wrong committed by the same defendant or defendants to be feasible, to obtain relief as a group, a class as it is called.” Id. Yet no matter how inspired a concept the class action device may be, it is not entirely resistant to the designs of fraudsters bent on abusing it—in this case, by imposters 2 claiming settlement proceeds to which they had no lawful right. This appeal presents us with issues arising out of a unique intersection of federal sentencing principles and class action settlement practice. Joseph Cammarata and two confederates developed an elaborate scheme by which they submitted fraudulent claims to administrators of securities class action settlement funds. None of the three were class members, yet their efforts yielded them over $40 million. Two of the men entered guilty pleas pursuant to agreements. Cammarata, though, proceeded to trial and was found guilty by a jury of all charges filed against him. In addressing the issues raised by Cammarata’s appeal, we uphold all but two of the District Court’s rulings, remanding for the District Court to reconsider its restitution award and to allow the Government to move to amend the District Court’s forfeiture order. I. BACKGROUND Joseph Cammarata and his business partners, Eric Cohen and David Punturieri (collectively “Defendants”), joined forces to create Alpha Plus Recovery, LLC (“Alpha Plus”) in 2014. Alpha Plus was a claims aggregator,1 with a 1 An extensive search for a formal definition of a class action “claims aggregator” yielded only a definition from a treatise which cites the complaint filed against Cammarata by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a parallel civil case. It explains that claims aggregators “are companies that solicit absent class members to provide services, including (i) filing 3 business model that revolved around securities class action settlements. Class actions generally involve hundreds, if not thousands, of class members. When a class action settles, some class members may conclude that the time and effort required to submit a small or modest claim outweigh any potential for obtaining a meaningful award from the settlement fund. Claims aggregators seek to remedy that dilemma. In exchange for a percentage of a client’s monetary recovery, claims aggregators complete necessary paperwork and then submit aggregated claims to a settlement administrator on behalf of numerous class-member clients. An administrator of a settle