govinfo:USCOURTS-dcd-1_23-cr-00123-1

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT  
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 
 
 
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
 v. 
 
DAVID MARESCA, et al.,  
 
 Defendants. 
 
 Case No. 1:23-cr-123 (RDM) 
                              
                        
 
MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER 
Defendant David Maresca moves to dismiss Counts 18 and 19 in the criminal case 
against him.  Dkt. 272.  Maresca and three others are charged in a nineteen-count indictment.1  
Dkt. 1 (Indictment).  Most of the charges concern an alleged “scheme to defraud distressed 
homeowners by falsely representing that [the defendants] would provide legal services that 
would help the homeowners save their homes,” when, “[i]n truth and in fact, the defendants did 
not provide legal services as promised.”  Id. at 3 (Indictment ¶ 7).  The government alleges that 
Maresca and his co-defendants carried out the scheme under the guise of two fraudulent law 
firms:  Synergy Law LLC (“Synergy Law”) and Themis Law PLLC (“Themis Law”).  Id. at 4–8 
(Indictment ¶ 10).  Synergy and Themis Law allegedly masqueraded as D.C.-based law firms 
but, according to the government, merely operated call centers in Virginia providing no actual 
legal services.  Id. 
Counts 18 and 19 do not concern the alleged defrauding of homeowners.  Instead, they 
charge Maresca with falsifying records in proceedings in the United States Bankruptcy Court for 
 
1  One of the three defendants, Terrylle Blackstone, has pled guilty to conspiracy to commit mail 
or wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.  Dkt. 55.  The other two are Scott Marinelli and 
Sam Babbs III, both of whom have entered pleas of not guilty.  Neither is charged in the counts 
at issue in the pending motion.   
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the District of Columbia on behalf of Synergy Law, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519.  Id. at 12–
13 (Indictment ¶ 19–20).  Maresca has moved to dismiss Counts 18 and 19 for lack of venue, 
relying on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Abouammo v. United States, 608 U.S. 597 
(2026).  Dkt. 272.  For the reasons that follow, the Court will GRANT the motion and will 
dismiss Counts 18 and 19 for lack of venue. 
I. BACKGROUND 
Counts 18 and 19 charge Maresca with “Falsification of Records in Bankruptcy, in 
violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519.”  Dkt. 1 at 13 (Indictment ¶ 20).  Section 1519 provides, in 
pertinent part, that it is a crime to “knowingly . . . falsif[y] . . . any record . . . with the intent to 
impeded, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration” of a Title 11 
bankruptcy proceeding.  18 U.S.C. § 1519.   
The government alleges that Maresca did so through his attorney on two separate 
occasions.  The first was on October 15, 2019, when Maresca caused his attorney to file a 
Statement of Financial Affairs for Non-Individuals Filing for Bankruptcy (Form 207) on behalf 
of Synergy Law.  Dkt. 1 at 13 (Indictment ¶ 20); Dkt. 275 at 1.  The Bankruptcy Court docketed 
the form as docket entry number 40 (“Document 40”).  Dkt. 275 at 1; see In re Synergy Law 
LLC, No. 19-0055-SMT.  Then on January 21, 2020, Maresca directed his attorney to file an 
amended version of the same document, this time docketed as docket entry number 88 
(“Document 88”).  Dkt. 275 at 2; see In re Synergy Law LLC, No. 19-0055-SMT.  The 
government alleges that both Documents 40 and 88 included a false entry in response to 
Question 13 of Form 207.  Dkt. 275 at 3; Dkt. 1 at 13 (Indictment ¶ 20).   
The attorney who represented Synergy Law in bankruptcy proceedings, Jeffrey Sherman, 
testified before the grand jury regarding the filing of the documents in question.  Sherman 
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explained that before generating an electronic signature, a filer must first obtain “an actually 
physically signed version” of the document to be filed.  Dkt. 275 at 4; Dkt. 279-2 at 22 (Grand 
Jury Tr. at 21:21–22, Feb 2, 2023).  Accordingly, before electronically filing both Documents, 
Sherman first obtained Maresca’s wet signature on physical copies of the documents.  Sherman 
testified that he obtained Maresca’s signature “in [Maresca’s] office in Manassas[,] [Virginia,] 
sometime within a couple of days prior to the filing.”  Dkt. 275 at 4; Dkt. 279-2 at 22–23 (Grand 
Jury Tr. at 21:23–22:5, Feb 2, 2023).  Although given ample opportunity, the government has 
failed to provide any evidence that either Maresca or his attorney were present within the District 
at the time of the electronic filing.  In fact, the available testimony suggests that Sherman likely 
completed the filing from Virginia.  He testified that at the time of the bankruptcy filings, he was 
“working out of [his] home” and “working for Themis in the offices that Synergy used to 
occupy” in Virginia.  Dkt. 279-2 at 4–5, 34 (Grand Jury Tr. at 3:25–4:1, 33:4–10, Feb 2, 2023).  
The government nonetheless argues that venue is proper in this district because the 
documents were filed in the Bankruptcy Court, which sits within the District of Columbia.  Dkt. 
275 at 5–7.       
II. ANALYSIS 
A. Venue After Abouammo 
 “[T]he Constitution not once but twice safeguards the defendant’s venue right.” 
Abouammo, 608 U.S. at 602 (citation modified); see also U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 3 (“Trial of 
all Crimes . . . shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed.”); 
U.S. Const. amend. VI (securing the right of criminal defendants to trial by a jury “of the State 
and district wherein the crime shall have been committed”).    
The government must therefore establish that “venue is proper with respect to each count 
charged against the defendant.”  United States v. Morgan, 393 F.3d 192, 195 (D.C. Cir. 2004).  
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In deciding questions of venue, a court must first “identify the conduct constituting the offense” 
and then determine where such acts occurred.  United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275, 
279 (1999).  Dismissal of charges before trial for improper venue is appropriate when “the 
reasonably available evidence shows that the government could not prove by a preponderance of 
the evidence that the charged offenses occurred” in the jurisdiction where the crime is charged.  
United States v. El-Saadi, 549 F. Supp. 3d 148, 157 n.4 (D.D.C. 2021) (citation modified).   
In Abouammo, the Supreme Court addressed venue under the same criminal statute at 
issue here.  In that case, two San Francisco-based FBI agents traveled to Seattle to interview 
Abouammo as part of an ongoing investigation.  608 U.S. at 600.  During the interview, 
Abouammo told the agents that he would retrieve an invoice from his upstairs computer to 
corroborate his statements.  Id.  When Abouammo went upstairs to do so, he created a false 
invoice and emailed it to one of the agents.  Id.  Upon returning to San Francisco, the agents 
examined the metadata of the false invoice and discovered Abouammo’s deception.  Id.  
Abouammo was indicted in the Northern District of California for falsifying a record in violation 
of 18 U.S.C. § 1519, and moved to dismiss for improper venue.  Id. at 600–01. The district court 
denied the motion, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed.  Id. at 601.   
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed, concluding that “the venue for trying a § 1519 
offense must be where a document’s falsification happened.”  Id. at 604.  This is because, the 
Court reasoned, the “only prohibited act in that statute is the falsification of the document.”  Id.  
In Abouammo’s case, that meant that “venue must be in the district encompassing Seattle, where 
Abouammo created the false invoice.”  Id.  It was “immaterial,” the Court reasoned, that 
“Abouammo’s false invoice reached California,” just as it was “immaterial” that he had “acted 
‘with the intent’ to obstruct an investigation across state lines.”  Id. at 605 (quoting United States 
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v. Johnson, 323 U.S. 273, 277 (1943)).  What mattered was that “Abouammo’s ‘crime [was] 
complete’ in Washington, so that is where he had to be tried.”  Id. at 605–06 (quoting Johnson, 
323 U.S. at 277).  
B. Venue is Not Proper in the District of Columbia  
Applying that reasoning here, Maresca argues that his alleged violation of § 1519 was 
complete when he “signed the relevant bankruptcy forms given to him by Mr. Sherman.”  Dkt. 
272 at 3.  Because the available evidence indicates that Maresca did so in Virginia, Maresca 
asserts, venue cannot be proper here in this district.  Id.  
That argument reaches the right outcome, but not for the right reasons.  As the 
government’s subsequent briefing makes clear, the government does not seek to rely upon 
Maresca’s signing of the physical documents as the basis for venue but, rather, upon the filing by 
his attorney of those documents with the Bankruptcy Court in the District of Columbia.  See Dkt. 
275 at 5.  Consistent with Abouammo, the government does not dispute that Maresca’s alleged 
signing of the physical documents in Virginia suffices to establish venue in that jurisdiction; the 
government instead asserts that venue is also appropriate in this district based on distinct acts 
alleged to have occurred here.  See id. at 7 (“The wet signature was part of a two-part process 
that was started in the Eastern District of Virginia and completed in the District of Columbia; 
thus venue could be proper in either jurisdiction.”).  Specifically, the government asserts that 
Maresca, having already signed allegedly fraudulent hard copies in Virginia, then “caused 
Documents 40 and 88 to be falsified in Washington, D.C.” when he directed his attorney to 
submit the fraudulent forms to the Bankruptcy Court via electronic filing.  Id.   
On its face, the government’s view that a case might involve multiple acts of falsification 
in multiple districts is not foreclosed by the logic of Abouammo.  Nothing in Abouammo says 
that a defendant may not violate § 1519 more than once or in more than one jurisdiction.  
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Consistent with Abouammo, it is possible that a defendant, having already created one false 
document, might use that false document to create another one in a subsequent act of 
falsification.  See Abouammo, 608 U.S. at 603 (noting that “[s]ometimes [the venue] inquiry 
points to more than one [district], because the proscribed acts happen in multiple locations”).     
Here, however, the government’s argument fails because it has not identified any 
proscribed acts that allegedly occurred within the District of Columbia.  As noted above, the 
government has failed to proffer any evidence that either Maresca or his attorney were present in 
the District when they filed (or caused to be filed) the Documents in the Bankruptcy Court.  At 
argument on August 27, 2026, the Court offered the government a further opportunity, until 
September 3, 2026, to file additional evidence as to conduct occurring within Washington, D.C.  
See Dkt. 291 at 58–59.  The government, however, declined to do so.  See Dkt. 296 at 1.  The 
government accordingly does not (and cannot) rely upon the act of filing within the District as a 
basis for venue.   
The government instead presses a novel and unpersuasive theory of venue that relies 
entirely upon what happened to the Documents after Maresca’s attorney submitted them to the 
Bankruptcy Court.  Specifically, the government relies upon the post-filing creation of a version 
of the Documents bearing Electronic Court Filing (“ECF”) headers.  Seeking to clarify the 
government’s position, the Court asked at argument if the government contends that, “when [the 
document] was filed, it became a new document because . . . an ECF number . . . was stamped on 
it?”  Dkt. 291 at 48.  The government responded, “Yes, that’s correct, it’s the one with the ECF 
stamping.”  Id.    
This argument fails as a matter of law and fact.  First, as a factual matter, the government 
offers no evidence that the servers that generate ECF-stamped versions of filed documents reside 
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in the District.  As a result, even if the Court were to accept that an ECF stamping suffices to 
create a new “falsifie[d] . . . record” for purposes of § 1519, the “reasonably available evidence” 
would still not show that the government could “prove by a preponderance of the evidence” that 
venue is proper within the District.  El-Saadi, 549 F. Supp. 3d at 157 n.4. 
Second, and more fundamentally, the argument fails as a matter of law because the mere 
addition of an ECF header—even if added in this district—is insufficient to establish venue 
under § 1519.  Abouammo held that venue is appropriate only if “falsification happened” within 
the district.  608 U.S. at 604.  The addition of an ECF header—or, generously formulated, the 
creation of a new version of a document bearing an ECF header—does not constitute an act of 
“falsification,” much less an act of falsification effectuated by or on behalf of the defendant.  To 
falsify is “to make false by mutilation or addition” or to “represent falsely.”  Webster’s Third 
New International Dictionary at 820 (1993).  The generation of an ECF-labeled version of a 
document represents, at most, the duplication of the previously falsified document.  Accord Dkt. 
277 at 4.  The addition of the header is the functional equivalent of a date-and-time stamp; it 
does not “make false” or “represent falsely.”   
The facts and reasoning of Abouammo are again illustrative.  Because Abouammo 
created the false invoice in Seattle, the Court concluded that venue properly lay in the Western 
District of Washington.  608 U.S. at 607.  The Court concluded that it was “immaterial . . . that 
Abouammo’s false invoice” later “reached California.”  Id. at 605.  Nor did it matter what the 
FBI agents in California did with the invoice after receiving it.  The Court made no inquiry as to 
whether the FBI agents printed, duplicated, or stamped copies of the false invoice in any way.  
That is because date-stamping or copying a false document by an independent third party—be it 
an FBI agent or a court—does not constitute a distinct act of falsification.  Section § 1519 makes 
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it a crime to falsify a record, not to copy or mark a previously falsified record.  Thus even if the 
government could show that the ECF headers were added on servers residing within the District 
of Columbia, that would not suffice to establish venue within the District.  
III. CONCLUSION  
The Court, accordingly, concludes that the government’s theory of venue fails as a matter 
of fact and law.  See Morgan, 393 F.3d at 195.  Maresca’s motion to dismiss Counts 18 and 19, 
Dkt. 272, is therefore GRANTED.   
SO ORDERED. 
                                /s/ Randolph D. Moss                  
                        RANDOLPH D. MOSS  
                   United States District Judge  
 
Date:  September 29, 2026 
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