Full Opinion

USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 1 of 22 NOT FOR PUBLICATION In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit ____________________ No. 25-14537 Non-Argument Calendar ____________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus MALCOLM JEFFREY, a.k.a. Malcolm Jeffery, Defendant-Appellant. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia D.C. Docket No. 1:24-cr-00044-LAG-ALS-2 ____________________ Before JILL PRYOR, BRANCH, and LUCK, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Malcolm Jeffrey registered Down N Dirty Transportation LLC in July 2019 and shut it down that December. It never filed a USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 2 of 22 2 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 W-2 or a 1099 for a single employee. But six months later, an em- ployer account appeared in the company’s name on the Georgia Department of Labor’s unemployment portal. It named Jeffrey as its administrator and listed his email address. Over the next sixteen months, that account filed roughly 7,300 unemployment claims, using about 4,900 Social Security numbers. Georgia paid out around $16 million on claims made in the names of people who had never worked a day for Jeffrey’s company. The claims were paid out on debit cards, many of which went to Jeffrey’s mother’s home, and Jeffrey’s email account contained many victims’ identi- fying information. A jury convicted Jeffrey of conspiring to com- mit mail fraud. The district court sentenced Jeffrey and ordered him to make restitution in the amount of the loss he caused. Jeffrey now appeals his conviction and the restitution order. Because none of his challenges has merit, we affirm. I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY Jeffrey and two others were charged with conspiring to com- mit mail fraud by filing false unemployment insurance claims with the Georgia Department of Labor. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1349. The co-conspirators pleaded guilty; Jeffrey went to trial. The Evidence of Jeffrey’s Fraud Scheme The Georgia Department of Labor administers an unem- ployment insurance program that pays eligible workers up to $365 per week. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the department allowed employers to file claims for their workers through an online portal USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 3 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 3 account. Employers could do so by submitting each claimant’s name, birthday, and Social Security number, and attesting that the information was true. Then, the department would mail a debit card preloaded with the approved benefit amount to whatever ad- dress the employer had listed for the claimant. In July 2019, Jeffrey registered a limited liability company with the state of Georgia: Down N Dirty Transportation. It never filed a W-2 or a 1099 for anyone, and Jeffrey said he shut it down that December. Yet from June 2020—six months after the com- pany stopped operating—to October 2021, Down N Dirty submit- ted roughly 7,300 unemployment claims using around 4,900 differ- ent Social Security numbers. It did so through an online portal ac- count naming Jeffrey as its administrator, listing his email address, and bearing the username “DND Transport 19.” The department eventually disabled the account, but not before it’d paid out around $16 million in claims. As it happened, those claims were fabricated. “[A] multitude of claimants”—five of whom testified at trial—contacted the de- partment to complain that they’d never worked for Down N Dirty and hadn’t known that claims had been filed in their names. They also never received any preloaded debit cards. Instead, records from the department’s debit-card vendor showed that card after card had been sent to an address in Cordele, Georgia—the home of Jeffrey’s mother. That address led to Jeffrey. When the government searched Jeffrey’s email account, it discovered photographs of two debit cards in the names of people USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 4 of 22 4 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 whose information was used to file fraudulent claims, including in the Down N Dirty portal account. Jeffrey’s mother had sent him the photographs. The account also contained photographs of stacks of cash and of handwritten lists of names, birthdays, and So- cial Security numbers, including those of the five claimants who testified. Several entries were annotated “accepted” and listed dol- lar amounts next to them. In the weeks before the Down N Dirty portal account was opened, the same email account had been used to search for “un- employment [G]eorgia,” “unemployment offices in Georgia,” and “Georgia Labor Department.” Later, the account searched for “Which states let the employer file the unemployment claim for the claimant”; “States with employer-filed claims”; and “Unem- ployment list by maximum amount.” It ran unemployment searches for a string of other states and visited their unemployment websites. Down N Dirty unemployment-portal accounts turned up in nine other states, and a “DNDTRANSPORT” account in a tenth. Some of the portal accounts were in the name of “Malcolm Hunt,” but used Jeffrey’s email address, phone numbers, and a dif- ferent email address matching another of Jeffrey’s companies. The email account contained several messages in which Jeffrey, using his real name, asked unemployment-insurance administrators in the other states for help filing claims. Additionally, Jeffrey’s co-conspirators sent Facebook mes- sages pairing the Georgia portal account’s administrator username with what appeared to be its contemporaneous password: “DND USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 5 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 5 Transport 19 and Trapper21” and “DND Transport 19 and Bigboy2020.” Jeffrey himself also wrote a message to another user saying, “I got a thousand reasons you should call me, [b]rah,” and gave a telephone number—the same number used to open the Down N Dirty portal account in one of the other states. A week later, he wrote to the same person, “I have like 60 Bank of America unemployment cards. Can they work or naw.” A call between them followed, and afterward Jeffrey wrote, “Yooo. Yo. What’s the move.” After connecting Jeffrey’s email and Facebook accounts to Down N Dirty’s portal account, the government sent Special Agent Joshua Barnes to interview Jeffrey about the account. Agent Barnes testified that, at first, Jeffrey denied creating the account. Then, he admitted that he’d lied, that he had created it, and that he’d shared its log-in information with his mother and stepfather. Agent Barnes also asked Jeffrey about a specific Down N Dirty ac- count in Texas. Once again, Jeffrey initially denied that he’d cre- ated any such account, only to change course and admit he’d done so to get money from Texas’s unemployment program too. Once Jeffrey was indicted, Agent Barnes contacted Jeffrey and told him to turn himself in. Instead, Jeffrey fled to North Carolina, where he stayed until he was found and arrested. The “Big Boy” Testimony and the Motion for Judgment of Acquittal At trial, the government asked Agent Barnes to explain the “DND Transport 19 and Bigboy2020” message. He explained that, like the Trapper21 message, it probably relayed the username and USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 6 of 22 6 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 password to the Georgia portal account. Asked whether he’d iden- tified anyone who went by the nickname “Big Boy,” Agent Barnes answered, “[t]he defendant, Malcolm Jeffrey.” Jeffrey didn’t object. On cross-examination, Jeffrey asked whether Agent Barnes had ever heard Jeffrey or Jeffrey’s mother refer to Jeffrey as Bigboy2020. Agent Barnes said he hadn’t. On redirect, Agent Barnes clarified that he’d “heard [Jeffrey] being referred to [by] that name,” but Jeffrey’s counsel objected that this was hearsay. After a sidebar, the district court overruled the objection, reasoning that the statement was “not offered for the truth of the matter asserted if [Jeffrey’s] name is Big Boy,” just that Jeffrey had been referred to as “Big Boy.” On recross, Jeffrey asked Agent Barnes how he had learned of the “Big Boy” nickname. Agent Barnes answered that he had heard it from Jeffrey’s cellmate. Jeffrey called another side- bar, complaining that “the cellmate they are talking about” was “looking at a potential life sentence” and urging the district court to allow him “to talk about . . . who the source of the information is, and why that individual would have wanted to talk to [the gov- ernment].” The district court told Jeffrey that “that[] [wasn’t] something that ha[d] to happen right here and now” and told him to raise the issue again at the end of the day. Shortly thereafter, the government rested and the district court excused the jury for the day. Jeffrey moved for a judgment of acquittal, arguing that, although the government had shown that he created the portal account, it had never tied him to any co- conspirators or to any particular illegal transaction. The district USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 7 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 7 court denied the motion. After all, it noted, the evidence showed that Jeffrey created the portal account after Down N Dirty went defunct, that he’d given the log-in information to other people, that his mother had possessed at least one card, and that he was aware that his conduct was unlawful. To figure out what to say about the “Big Boy” nickname to the jury, Jeffrey asked the district court to allow him to continue cross-examining Agent Barnes. Since the jury had been excused, the district court allowed it. Recalled to the stand, Agent Barnes read a passage from his report recounting that Jeffrey’s cellmate said that “everyone in the[ir] dorm referred to Jeffrey as Big Boy because he was overweight.” But the cellmate also told Agent Barnes that a woman sent a text message to an illegal cellphone circulating within the prison, “relaying a message from Big Boy” that Jeffrey’s cellmate was a confidential informant. Jeffrey’s counsel claimed that he was “stuck in a catch-22.” He wanted to argue to the jury that the “Big Boy” nickname was used only within the prison and therefore didn’t relate to the fraud scheme. But he couldn’t do so without also introducing the woman’s text, which showed that the “Big Boy” nickname was also used outside the prison. The district court ruled that Jeffrey could put in both facts or neither. He chose to drop the matter. The next morning, the district court brought in the jury and asked Jeffrey whether he wished to call any witnesses. Jeffrey rested and said he had no motions. So, the district court instructed the jury without objection and allowed the parties to deliver their USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 8 of 22 8 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 closing arguments. In its closing, the government recounted the evidence without mentioning the “Big Boy” nickname. Jeffrey, however, did mention the nickname, asking the jury to consider why the cellmate hadn’t appeared in court to testify. After deliberating for about an hour, the jury convicted Jef- frey of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. After the jury returned its verdict, the district court asked Jeffrey again whether he had “[a]ny motions or requests.” He answered no. The Sentence The district court set Jeffrey’s sentencing hearing for De- cember 2025. The probation office prepared a presentence investi- gation report setting out the amounts of actual loss caused by the conspiracy. At the hearing, Jeffrey objected that he hadn’t conspired with anyone and that he hadn’t organized or led the conspiracy. The district court overruled both objections, finding that he “cre- ated the portals,” that he “managed several other people” who used them, and that he “was definitely one of the leaders in this conspiracy.” The district court asked Jeffrey if he had any other objections. When he said he didn’t, the court adopted the report as written. Based on Jeffrey’s conduct and his presentence investigation report, the district court concluded that Jeffrey’s total offense level was thirty-five and his criminal history was a category one, yielding a guideline range of 168 to 210 months’ imprisonment. But the dis- trict court varied downward to 120 months’ imprisonment and USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 9 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 9 three years of supervised release, explaining that the guidelines were “high and . . . not in line with how people around the nation are being sentenced in cases like this.” The district court also ordered Jeffrey to pay $16,958,372 in restitution—$16,683,612 to the Georgia Department of Labor, jointly and severally with his co-conspirators, and $274,760 to the unemployment-insurance administrators of Nevada and Massa- chusetts, where the conspiracy had also operated. That restitution, the district court explained, was “limited to the amount of deter- mined loss in the case” as set forth in the presentence investigation report. When the court asked, after imposing sentence, whether there were any objections, Jeffrey answered no. II. DISCUSSION Jeffrey attacks his conviction on three grounds and the resti- tution order on one. First, he contends that the district court wrongly denied his motion for judgment of acquittal. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a). Second, he complains that allowing in “hearsay” about the “Big Boy” nickname likely caused the jury to convict him where it otherwise wouldn’t have. Third, he argues that we should grant him a new trial because the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 33. Finally, as to his sentence, he claims that the district court erred by attributing the entire amount of the loss to him without finding that he “personally re- ceived or withdrew specific fraud proceeds.” All four attacks fail. USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 10 of 22 10 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 The Denial of Acquittal Jeffrey concedes that “the [g]overnment did present evi- dence that [he] created the portal, used email accounts associated with the portal, was connected to multi-state unemployment activ- ity, and possessed photographs of cards and cash.” Still, he says, the evidence wasn’t “sufficient to prove . . . Jeffrey’s knowing, vol- untary participation” in the charged conspiracy. We disagree. “After the government closes its evidence . . . the court on the defendant’s motion must enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is insufficient to sustain a convic- tion.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 29(a). We review the sufficiency of the ev- idence de novo, “considering the evidence in the light most favor- able to the government and ‘resolv[ing] any conflicts in the evi- dence in [its] favor.’” United States v. Bryan, 159 F.4th 1274, 1287 (11th Cir. 2025) (quoting United States v. Lander, 668 F.3d 1289, 1296–97 (11th Cir. 2012)). We apply the same standard of review to the district court’s denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal. Id. (citing United States v. Descent, 292 F.3d 703, 706 (11th Cir. 2002)). Proof of an element of the charged crime may be established through direct evidence, “circumstantial evidence[,] or . . . infer- ences drawn from the conduct of an individual.” Id. (quoting United States v. Utter, 97 F.3d 509, 512 (11th Cir. 1996)). “[N]o dis- tinction is to be made between the weight given to either direct or circumstantial evidence.” Id. (quoting United States v. Mieres-Borges, 919 F.2d 652, 656–57 (11th Cir. 1990)). At bottom, we may not USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 11 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 11 overturn a jury verdict “if any reasonable construction of the evi- dence would have allowed the jury to find the defendant guilty be- yond a reasonable doubt.” United States v. Rodriguez, 732 F.3d 1299, 1303 (11th Cir. 2013) (citing United States v. Herrera, 931 F.2d 761, 762 (11th Cir. 1991)). Jeffrey was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. 18 U.S.C. § 1349; see id. § 1341. Mail fraud has two elements: “(1) an intentional participation in a scheme to defraud a person of money or property, and (2) the use of the mails in furtherance of the scheme.” Lander, 668 F.3d at 1297 (citation modified). Con- spiracy to commit mail fraud, in turn, requires (1) a conspiracy to commit mail fraud; (2) knowledge of that conspiracy; and (3) knowing and voluntary participation in it. See United States v. Alli, 184 F.4th 1280, 1291 (11th Cir. 2026). Those elements were the sum of the government’s burden. The government didn’t need to prove that Jeffrey “knew all of the details or participated in every aspect of the conspiracy” or that he committed any overt act—just that he knew of the conspiracy’s “essential nature.” United States v. Moran, 778 F.3d 942, 960, 964 (11th Cir. 2015). And because the crime of conspiracy is “predom- inantly mental in composition,” the government was allowed to prove its case with “inferences and circumstantial evidence.” Id. at 960 (citing United States v. Vernon, 723 F.3d 1234, 1273 (11th Cir. 2013)). USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 12 of 22 12 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 Put simply, the government’s evidence against Jeffrey was more than sufficient to sustain the conviction. Jeffrey doesn’t ar- gue that there wasn’t a conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Nor does he—or can he—argue that he didn’t know about it. The evidence showed that thousands of claims were filed through the Down N Dirty portal account in the names of people who had never worked for the company, and that the department mailed benefit cards in response. Jeffrey created the account, named him- self its administrator, and kept the claimants’ stolen identifying in- formation in his email. He knew what the account was being used for. And when he was indicted, he fled. All Jeffrey argues is that the government didn’t show that he knowingly and voluntarily joined the conspiracy. But the spine of the conspiracy was Down N Dirty’s portal account with the depart- ment, and the jury could reasonably have concluded that Jeffrey was intimately associated with it. In the weeks leading up to June 2020, when the account was opened, Jeffrey’s email account searched for “unemployment [G]eorgia,” “unemployment offices in Georgia,” and “Georgia Labor Department.” Then, six months after he’d shut down the company, he opened an account with the department so that Down N Dirty—his company, that never em- ployed or paid a single person—could make claims for its “employ- ees.” Again, he named himself the account’s administrator and listed his own email address. He admitted sharing his log-in infor- mation with his mother and stepfather, and his co-conspirators USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 13 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 13 were able to log in as well. And on top of all that, he made analo- gous accounts in other states and admitted to trying to obtain ben- efits from Texas. The jury also could have reasonably concluded that the gov- ernment’s evidence tied Jeffrey to specific instances of fraud. As money drained from the department to pay the claims made through Jeffrey’s account, a “multitude of claimants” called the de- partment to deny any affiliation with Down N Dirty. Five of them testified that they never worked for Down N Dirty, never author- ized a claim, and never received any benefits. Each of those five witnesses appeared, by name, birthday, and Social Security num- ber, in handwritten notes photographed and stored in Jeffrey’s email account. Some of the names were annotated “accepted” and marked with dollar amounts. And Jeffrey’s email account held photographs of debit cards issued in other people’s names, includ- ing one on a Down N Dirty claim, and his mother had sent him photos of them. And it’d have been no stretch for the jury to infer Jeffrey’s knowing participation in the conspiracy from the fact that he prof- ited from it. Debit cards issued on the Down N Dirty claims were mailed to Jeffrey’s mother’s address in Cordele. He had several photographs of stacks of cash in his email account. Later, he sent messages apparently trying to sell unemployment cards, telling an- other user “I got a thousand reasons you should call me, [b]rah.” Finally, the jury could have inferred Jeffrey’s guilt from his conduct. Cf. United States v. Shabazz, 887 F.3d 1204, 1220 (11th Cir. USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 14 of 22 14 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 2018) (“[A] statement by a defendant, if disbelieved by the jury, may be considered as substantive evidence of the defendant’s guilt, particularly when the elements to be proved for a conviction in- clude . . . intent or knowledge.” (citation modified)). He initially lied to Agent Barnes about his connection to the conspiracy, deny- ing that he’d created the Georgia portal account. Plus, when Jef- frey discovered that he was going to be arrested, he fled. Jeffrey faults the government for not presenting any direct evidence of his involvement—“direct communications” between Jeffrey and his co-conspirators, photographs of him using the debit cards at ATMs, and so on. That’s true. But the jury could “infer the existence of an agreement from indirect or circumstantial evi- dence.” Alli, 184 F.4th at 1292. That the government didn’t rely on Jeffrey’s preferred kind of evidence is not a defect in its case. Id. (rejecting the defendant’s invitation to “fault[] the prosecution for not introducing direct evidence” of his involvement in a sec- tion 1349 conspiracy). However else we might construe the evi- dence, at least one reasonable construction of it decisively allowed the jury to find Jeffrey guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See Ro- driguez, 732 F.3d at 1303. The district court therefore didn’t err in denying a judgment of acquittal. The “Big Boy” Testimony Jeffrey next attacks the district court’s decision to admit Agent Barnes’s testimony about the “Big Boy” nickname, claiming that the government was able to use it as “identity glue” to link him to the conspiracy: USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 15 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 15 [Agent] Barnes was permitted to read from his report that, according to [the cellmate], an unknown woman said, I am just relaying a message from Big Boy. [Agent] Barnes also read that, according to [the cell- mate], a text message stated that [the cellmate] was a [confidential informant] and that inmates in the dorm referred to Jeffrey as Big Boy because he was over- weight. The [g]overnment thus placed before the jury what [the cellmate] allegedly said about what an unknown woman allegedly said about what an un- seen text message allegedly conveyed. That was mul- tiple hearsay, and each layer mattered. But Agent Barnes didn’t read any of this to the jury. They’d already been dismissed for the day. In any event, even if the jury had been present, any error in allowing Agent Barnes to read from his report would have been harmless. “A nonconstitutional evidentiary error is harmless and ‘must be disregarded’ unless it affected the defendant’s ‘substantial rights’ at trial.” 1 United States v. Cremades, 160 F.4th 1296, 1304 (11th Cir. 2025) (quoting Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a)). “‘Overwhelming evidence of guilt’ may render an erroneous ruling harmless.” Id. (quoting United States v. Guzman, 167 F.3d 1350, 1353 (11th Cir. 1999)). 1 Jeffrey mentions the Confrontation Clause in passing but fails to make any argument about it. We therefore don’t address it. USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 16 of 22 16 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 For two reasons, any error here was harmless. First, the ev- idence against Jeffrey was overwhelming. As we’ve explained, he created an employer portal account using his name for a company he’d shut down, after he shut it down. His email account contained five victims’ identifying information, annotated with dollar amounts. Card after card was routed to his mother’s house. He used his own information to replicate the scheme in at least one other state. And when he finally faced arrest, he fled. All this highly probative evidence was “uninfected by the [purported] error.” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Fortenberry, 971 F.2d 717, 722 (11th Cir. 1992)). Second, the challenge was cumulative of Agent Barnes’s ear- lier testimony that Jeffrey’s nickname was “Big Boy.” And the in- ference the “Big Boy” nickname was meant to support was tenu- ous; at most, it connected Jeffrey to one of the passwords to his employer portal account. The nickname was unconnected to the other evidence that Jeffrey created the account using his own name, listed himself as its administrator, used his own email ad- dress for it, and initially lied to Agent Barnes about creating it. Nor did the government ask the jury to make anything of the nickname. The only mention of “Big Boy” in the closings came from Jeffrey himself, which means that he can’t complain of any prejudice that came from it. Cf., e.g., United States v. Dicks, 338 F.3d 1256, 1258 (11th Cir. 2003) (“Appellant cannot claim that he suf- fered prejudice as a result of the jury knowing that he had AIDS, because it was [a]ppellant’s trial attorney who let the jury know USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 17 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 17 that [a]ppellant suffered from AIDS.”). Jeffrey suggests the jury had nothing to keep it from misusing the “Big Boy” testimony. But he never requested a jury instruction about the nickname and didn’t object to the instructions the court gave. All of this is to say that even if Agent Barnes had read his report before the jury—and he didn’t—it’d be “inconceivable” that the jury would have returned a different verdict. Cremades, 160 F.4th at 1305 (citation modified). Any error was “harmless given all the other evidence presented at trial.” Id. The Weight of the Evidence Jeffrey next urges us to vacate his conviction and remand his case for a new trial because the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. But we can’t. “Upon the defendant’s motion, the court may vacate any judgment and grant a new trial if the interest of justice so requires.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 33(a). We review the grant or denial of a new trial for abuse of discretion, but we give denials “greater deference.” United States v. Moore, 76 F.4th 1355, 1363 (11th Cir. 2023). A new trial on the weight of the evidence is reserved for “really excep- tional cases” in which the evidence “preponderate[s] heavily against the verdict.” United States v. Brown, 934 F.3d 1278, 1297 (11th Cir. 2019) (citation modified). As a threshold matter, though, a district court may not grant a new trial where the defendant doesn’t move for one. United States v. DiBernardo, 880 F.2d 1216, 1223 (11th Cir. 1989); United States v. Brown, 587 F.2d 187, 189 (5th Cir. 1979) (“A district court . . . is USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 18 of 22 18 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 powerless to order a new trial except on the motion of the defend- ant.”); United States v. Eaton, 501 F.2d 77, 78 (5th Cir. 1974) (“[The district court] lacked the authority to order a new trial when one had not been requested by the defendant.”). And because our own “authority to order a new trial must arise from the grant of powers to the district court,” we can’t remand for a new trial if there wasn’t a motion below. DiBernardo, 880 F.2d at 1225. Nothing about this case is “really exceptional,” and, for the reasons we’ve explained, the evidence here doesn’t preponderate heavily against the verdict. And Jeffrey never moved the district court for a new trial. Both after he rested and after the jury re- turned its verdict, he told the district court that he had no motions. Indeed, since the verdict, he’s made no motions of any kind. One way or another, then, Jeffrey isn’t entitled to a new trial. The Restitution Jeffrey’s last argument is that the district court was required to make “individualized findings . . . regarding the scope of Jeffrey’s own jointly undertaken criminal activity” such that the govern- ment could show “the losses proximately caused by him.” The government, he complains, offered “no bank tracing, forensic ac- counting, or individualized proof tying particular Georgia, Nevada, or Massachusetts losses to Jeffrey.” This argument, which Jeffrey never made to the district court, fails in any event. Unpreserved restitution challenges are subject to plain error review. United States v. Utsick, 45 F.4th 1325, 1332 (11th Cir. 2022) (citing United States v. Jones, 289 F.3d 1260, 1265 (11th Cir. 2002)). USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 19 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 19 “To establish plain error, a defendant must show that there was an (1) error, (2) that is plain, and (3) that affects substantial rights.” Id. (citing United States v. Castro, 455 F.3d 1249, 1253 (11th Cir. 2006)). “Where all three conditions are met, we may then exercise our dis- cretion to notice a forfeited error, but only if the error seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial pro- ceedings.” Id. The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act requires a district court to order restitution to the victims of certain offenses, includ- ing conspiracy to commit mail fraud. 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(1), (c)(1)(A)(ii), (c)(1)(B) (including “offense[s] against property under this title,” such as “any offense committed by fraud or deceit,” where “an identifiable victim or victims has suffered a physical in- jury or pecuniary loss”). Where the offense involves a conspiracy, a victim is anyone “directly harmed” by the defendant’s “criminal conduct in the course of the scheme, conspiracy, or pattern.” Id. § 3663A(a)(2). The definition of “victim” is “expansive.” United States v. Brown, 665 F.3d 1239, 1252 (11th Cir. 2011). Restitution for such an offense is accordingly not “limited to the specific act of fraud underlying the mailing . . . for which the defendant is convicted.” United States v. Foley, 508 F.3d 627, 635 (11th Cir. 2007) (quoting United States v. Hasson, 333 F.3d 1264, 1276 n.13 (11th Cir. 2003)). Instead, “when the crime of conviction in- cludes a scheme, conspiracy, or pattern of criminal activity as an element of the offense, the court may order restitution for acts of related conduct for which the defendant was not convicted.” USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 20 of 22 20 Opinion of the Court 25-14537 United States v. Dickerson, 370 F.3d 1330, 1339 (11th Cir. 2004) (cita- tion modified). It suffices for the harm to be “closely related to the scheme.” Id. at 1339, 1343. Within those bounds, the court must order “restitution to each victim in the full amount of each victim’s losses . . . and with- out consideration of the economic circumstances of the defend- ant.” 18 U.S.C. § 3664(f)(1)(A). Although restitution must be based on the amount of actual loss, United States v. Moss, 34 F.4th 1176, 1193 (11th Cir. 2022), and must reflect each victim’s loss proxi- mately caused by the defendant’s conduct, United States v. Martin, 803 F.3d 581, 594 (11th Cir. 2015), the defendant’s conduct “need not be the sole cause of the loss.” United States v. Collins, 854 F.3d 1324, 1336 (11th Cir. 2017) (citation modified). And where “more than [one] defendant has contributed to the loss of a victim, the court may make each defendant liable for payment of the full amount of restitution or may apportion liability among the defend- ants.” 18 U.S.C. § 3664(h). The Act “specifically contemplates joint and several liability.” United States v. Puentes, 803 F.3d 597, 605 (11th Cir. 2015). Jeffrey never objected that the district court hadn’t made suf- ficiently individualized findings, so we review the amount of resti- tution for plain error. And there was no plain error here. The dis- trict court was allowed to hold Jeffrey responsible for the harm he caused “in the course of the . . . conspiracy.” 18 U.S.C. § 3663A(a)(2). And it found, clearly and specifically, that Jeffrey cre- USCA11 Case: 25-14537 Document: 25-1 Date Filed: 11/02/2026 Page: 21 of 22 25-14537 Opinion of the Court 21 ated the portals and managed others as one of the conspiracy’s lead- ers. Those findings, together with the uncontested loss amounts in the presentence report, justified attributing the entire loss amount to him. Id. § 3664(h); see also, e.g., United States v. Grady, 18 F.4th 1275, 1289 (11th Cir. 2021) (“Here, the losses in question re- sulted from acts which were part of the conspiracy of which [the defendants] were convicted. Therefore, the district court had the authority to hold them jointly and severally liable for the full amount of restitution.”). Nothing required the government to trace particular dollars into his pocket; restitution was available with respect to the “entire scheme or artifice to defraud.” Foley, 508 F.3d at 635. Pointing