United States Court of Appeals For the Eighth Circuit ___________________________ No. 18-2211 ___________________________ United States of America lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee v. John Kelsey Gammell lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ___________________________ No. 18-2692 ___________________________ United States of America lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee v. John Kelsey Gammell lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ____________ Appeals from United States District Court for the District of Minnesota ____________ Submitted: March 15, 2019 Filed: August 8, 2019 ____________ Before SHEPHERD, ERICKSON, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. ____________ SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge. After conducting a series of malicious computer attacks, John Gammell pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A), (b), (c)(4)(A)(i)(I), (c)(4)(A)(i)(VI), and (c)(4)(B), and to two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g) and 924(e). The district court1 sentenced Gammell to 60 months on the conspiracy count and, after classifying Gammell as an armed career criminal, to 180 months on the felon-in-possession counts, with the sentences running concurrently. The district court also ordered Gammell to pay $955,656.77 in restitution to 14 victims of his attacks. In this consolidated appeal, Gammell challenges both his classification as an armed career criminal and the district court’s restitution order. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we affirm. I. Between 2015 and 2017, Gammell engaged in a campaign of malicious computer attacks against various entities with whom he had personal grievances. The attacks, known as distributed denial of service attacks, or DDoS attacks, use repeated 1 The Honorable Wilhelmina M. Wright, United States District Judge for the District of Minnesota. -2- attempts to deny service to a computer or website, thereby making it inaccessible to users or customers. In essence, DDoS attacks flood a computer or website with massive amounts of internet traffic to the point that the computer or website becomes disabled and inaccessible to users or customers. Gammell victimized approximately 40 different entities, comprised of companies he used to work for, companies that did not hire him, companies that he perceived as competitors to his business, law enforcement agencies, and court systems. His attacks lasted anywhere from weeks to two years and resulted in the disruption or complete disabling of the victims’ websites, applications, or computer systems. Each of his victims experienced difficulty in restoring the reliability, functionality, and accessability of the affected websites, and expended significant efforts and resources in identifying the source of the attacks and in taking suitable mitigation and infrastructure improvement measures. Throughout the course of his attacks, Gammell made considerable efforts to conceal his identity as the perpetrator. When using his own computer to launch DDoS attacks, Gammell used a service to mask his IP address, used encrypted and drive cleaning tools to conceal any evidence of the attacks on his computer, spoofed email addresses, and used names of victims’ former employees to create suspicion against other individuals. Gammell also utilized third-party companies to launch attacks, which significantly multiplied the number of attacks and further ...
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