PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 23-4352

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

MAGGIE ANNE BOLER,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Columbia. Terry L. Wooten, Senior District Judge. (3:22-cr-00073-TLW-1)

Argued: May 9, 2024 Decided: August 23, 2024

Before THACKER, QUATTLEBAUM, and BENJAMIN, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Thacker wrote the opinion in which Judge Benjamin joined. Judge Quattlebaum wrote a dissenting opinion.

ARGUED: Jeremy A. Thompson, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellant. Tommie DeWayne Pearson, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Adair F. Boroughs, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Columbia, South Carolina, for Appellee. USCA4 Appeal: 23-4352 Doc: 46 Filed: 08/23/2024 Pg: 2 of 51

THACKER, Circuit Judge:

Maggie Boler (“Appellant”) was convicted of six counts of presenting false claims

against the United States by submitting false tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service

(“IRS”), and one count of making a false statement on her fraudulent Paycheck Protection

Program 1 (“PPP”) loan application. Appellant submitted six tax returns to the IRS but only

received refunds on four of those returns. As a result of her convictions, Appellant was

sentenced to 30 months of imprisonment.

The sole issue in this appeal is whether Appellant’s United States Sentencing

Guidelines (“Guidelines”) sentencing range can rely on the entire financial harm Appellant

intended to cause, even though she never received the funds from the two tax returns denied

by the IRS.

We conclude that the complete extent of Appellant’s intended financial harm can

be utilized in determining her Guidelines sentencing range. Thus, we affirm because the

district court correctly incorporated Appellant’s full intended loss amount into the

sentencing calculation.

1 In 2020, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act, Pub. L. 116-136, § 1102, 134 Stat. 285, 286 (2020). Section 1102 of the CARES Act created the Paycheck Protection Program to grant forgivable loans to small business owners for certain expenses. Id.

2 USCA4 Appeal: 23-4352 Doc: 46 Filed: 08/23/2024 Pg: 3 of 51

I.

A.

Appellant was prosecuted for her involvement in a fraudulent tax scheme. Part of

her scheme was filing fraudulent tax returns to the IRS, claiming larger refund amounts

than she and others were entitled to. Appellant used fictitious interest income and

fabricated federal income tax withholdings to claim these large tax refunds. For the 2016

tax year, Appellant submitted six fraudulent tax returns on behalf of herself and others,

falsely claiming a total of $159,389 in tax refunds. The IRS denied two of the fraudulent

tax returns but paid the other four tax refunds, which totaled $116,106.

In 2021, Appellant applied for a PPP loan. In her PPP loan application, Appellant

stated that her business, named “Maggie A Boler,” had an a

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