Healthcare & wire fraud; The Confrontation Clause; Right to present a “complete defense”; FRE 403; Bolstering a witness’s credibility; Referring to the witness as an expert in front of the jury; Variance in the trial proofs from the conspiracy alleged in the indictment; Lay witness testimony interpreting text messages, FRE 701; Denial of a FedRCrimP 17(c) subpoena; Request for remand for a jury poll; Sentencing; Procedural reasonableness; Loss amount calculation; Sophisticated means enhancement; Substantive reasonableness; Restitution

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] The court held that a witness in this healthcare and wire fraud case did not violate defendants’ Confrontation Clause rights where she could testify to her independent interpretation of data provided by others. It also held that they were not denied the right to present a complete defense by the district court’s exclusion of certain evidence, and they did not show that their substantial rights were affected by the district court’s referring to a witness as an expert in front of the jury. The court rejected their variance claim and their challenges to testimony under FRE 701. It upheld the denial of a motion to subpoena records under Rule 17(c), and rejected defendants’ sentencing challenges. A jury convicted defendants-Hamaed, Ghussin, Abdelrazzaq, and Fakhuri, who were pharmacists, of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud. Fakhuri was also convicted of healthcare fraud. On appeal, they first challenged, on Confrontation Clause grounds, a witness’s (S) testimony about a government contractor’s (Qlarant) fraud investigation. S was a Qlarant employee. Defendants argued “that her expert opinion incorporated the opinions of nontestifying Qlarant analysts who verified that the data [S] relied on was complete.” But the court noted that S did not testify to another person’s out-of-court statements. “Defendants stipulated to the admissibility of the data[,]” and they had access to records and the inputs. S “testified to the work she personally performed. It does not matter that other people performed the same work before her.” The court rejected defendants’ claim that the district court’s evidentiary rulings made it impossible to offer “a complete defense” where they failed to show the exclusions were “‘arbitrary or disproportionate,’” or infringed on their “‘weighty interest[.]’” While the district court should not have referred to S “as an expert in front of the jury, and the government should not have asked it to do so[,]” defendants failed to show that this error affected their substantial rights. There also was no “variance” because the proof presented “was sufficient for the jury to find a single conspiracy” as alleged in the indictment rather than separate ones. Further, the district court did not abuse its discretion in permitting a lay witness to testify to his interpretation of text messages, and it properly denied a motion for a Rule 17(c) subpoena. The court also held that the sentences of Hamaed, Abdelrazzaq, and Ghussin were procedurally reasonable, concluding that the loss amounts were properly calculated and the district court properly applied a sophisticated means enhancement to Ghussin. Finally, it rejected his substantive reasonableness challenge, and upheld the imposition of restitution. Affirmed.