Sentencing; Scoring of OV 14; MCL 777.44(1)(a) (leader in a multiple offender situation); People v Baskerville

Holding that the trial court did not err in scoring 10 points for OV 14 in sentencing defendant, the court affirmed. He pled guilty to larceny and illegally selling or using a financial transaction device after purchasing and using stolen credit card numbers. He was sentenced to concurrent terms of 28 months to 7.5 years for the larceny and 21 months to 6 years for the financial-transaction-device conviction. His only argument on appeal was that the trial court erred in scoring 10 points for OV 14. The court disagreed, concluding the trial court reasonably determined “that the unknown person who sold defendant the credit-card numbers was also an offender. This individual was clearly an offender because he or she could have also been charged with illegally selling a financial transaction device.” In addition, considering the whole “criminal transaction, the trial court reasonably concluded that as between defendant and the unknown seller, defendant was the leader. [He] was the one who actually used the credit-card numbers to commit the larceny; the seller simply enabled the crimes by offering the card numbers for sale. Defendant directed when, where, and how much to charge each card. In other words, [he] was the ‘primary causal’ agent in this crime, and it was defendant’s use of the card numbers that actually defrauded the victims.” Considering the whole criminal transaction, the court concluded that the trial court did not clearly err in finding “by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant was the leader in a situation involving multiple offenders.”