Judge Paul Crotty
A June 2012 superseding indictment charged the Levys with conspiracy and substantive counts of securities and wire fraud, and money laundering in connection with their involvement in a "pump and dump" scheme deceiving investors into buying stocks at artificially inflated values. Distinguishing United States v. Vilar, the court denied the Levys suppression of hand guns, computers, cell phones and assorted documents seized during the Oct. 5, 2010, execution of a warrant to search their home. The search warrant did not include a date range limit for materials to be seized nor limited the scope of the seizure to materials related to a certain "Stock 3." Nor did the warrant attach or incorporate a federal agent’s underlying affidavit or describe the "pump and dump" scheme’s underlying conduct. The court found the October 2010 search warrant neither overbroad nor insufficiently particularized anddiscussing United States v. George, United States v. Hernandez and Messerschmidt v. Millenderconcluded that even if the search warrant had violated the Fourth Amendment, the evidence obtained as a result of the warrant’s execution would not have been suppressed due to the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
