- Case Type:
- Business
- Case Status:
- Reversed and Remanded
- Citation:
- 22-16128 (9th Circuit, Jun 09,2025) Published
- Tag(s):
-
- Ruling:
- Overruling the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California (DC) and deeming mootness inapposite, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Circuit) held the plain language of section 3004 of the Federal Debt Collection Procedures Act (FDCPA) imposes a mandatory obligation to transfer proceedings to the judicial district in which a petitioner seemingly resides, like the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits, and that the DC's failure to do so required vacating a final garnishment order, contra the Sixth, issued after the conviction of Steven Zinnel for certain financial crimes.
- Procedural context:
- After a jury convicted Steven Zinnel (Zinnel) of bankruptcy fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes, the DC issued an order of garnishment seeking to seize funds from Zinnel's TD Ameritrade Clearing, Inc., Individual Retirement Account. In so doing, the DC overruled Zinnel’s objections to the writ of garnishment, both rejecting a motion arguing that that he had already satisfied all payments the judgment required and denying his timely motion to transfer the garnishment proceedings to the district in which he purportedly resided, and ordered TD Ameritrade to pay the district court clerk for unpaid restitution and unpaid fines, and pay the U.S. Department of Justice $150,000 as a litigation surcharge. Zinnel timely appealed from the final garnishment order.
- Facts:
- A jury convicted Zinnel of bankruptcy fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 152, money laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(B)(i), and other financial crimes in the DC. The district court sentenced Zinnel to a total term of 152 months’ imprisonment, ordered Zinnel to pay $2,513,319 in restitution, $500,000 in fines, and a $1,500 special assessment, and ordered Zinnel to forfeit to the United States both his interest in various real property and businesses, and a “personal” money judgment “in the amount of $1,297,158.20.”Following the judgment, the government filed in the Eastern District of California an application for a writ of garnishment under the FDCPA, seeking to seize funds from a TD Ameritrade Clearing, Inc., Individual Retirement Account that Zinnel owned. The government sought both to obtain funds to satisfy Zinnel’s unpaid restitution and fines and to recover a percentage of the unpaid penalties as a litigation surcharge under 28 U.S.C. § 3011.
- Judge(s):
- Carlos T. Bea; Ana de Alba; and Jeffrey Vincent Brown
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