USA v. Kerrissey

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
JOSEPH KERRISSEY, III,
Defendant.
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Criminal Action No. 24-cr-10106-ADB
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
BURROUGHS, D.J.
Currently before the Court is Defendant Joseph Bernard Kerrissey III’s (“Kerrissey’s”)
motion to suppress evidence obtained during a search of his residence pursuant to a search
warrant. [ECF No. 69]. For the reasons set forth below, the motion is DENIED.
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I. 	BACKGROUND
The government initiated this wire-fraud case by sealed criminal complaint on April 5,
2024. [ECF No. 1]. That same day, U.S. Postal Inspector Ryan T. Noonan applied for a warrant
to search the property located at 20 Sunrise Avenue in Plymouth, Massachusetts. See [ECF No.
69-1]. Noonan’s affidavit, which was attached to the search warrant application, [ECF No. 69-
2], stated that he had probable cause to believe that Kerrissey “submitted six fraudulent
Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loan applications on behalf of three different companies
that [he] owned or controlled,” thereby violating 18 U.S.C. § 1343. [Id. ¶¶ 3–4]. The allegedly
fraudulent applications were submitted between April 2020 and April 2021. [Id. ¶ 27].
In his affidavit, as relevant here, Noonan also attested that he had probable cause to
believe that the property to be searched contained “fruits, evidence, and instrumentalities” of
those offenses. [ECF No. 69-2 ¶ 81]. Specifically, the affidavit noted that Kerrissey had listed
the property as his personal address and as the business address for all three companies, [id.
¶ 82]; the property was connected to the IP address from which multiple of the fraudulent PPP
loan applications were submitted, [id. ¶ 83]; bank accounts that received funds for the PPP loans
to the three companies were opened with the property listed as the address for the companies, [id.
¶ 84]; an address verification listed Kerrissey as receiving mail at the property, [id. ¶ 85]; and
Noonan had on March 21, 2024, visited the property and identified Kerrissey as the person living
there, [id. ¶ 86].
As specified in Attachment B to the affidavit, the government sought “[a]ll records, in
whatever form, and tangible objects that constitute evidence, fruits, or instrumentalities of
violations of 18 U.S.C. [§] 1343, dating from April 2020 until the present,” including
enumerated categories of records pertaining to Kerrissey and the three companies. [ECF No. 69-
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3 at 1–3]. The government also sought “[a]ll computer hardware, computer software, and
storage media reasonably believed to belong to [Kerrissey] or Buckman,” Kerrissey’s partner,
but the government noted that the off-site searching of the electronics would be subject to the
same temporal and subject-matter limitations as the other records sought to be seized. [Id. at 3];
see also [ECF No. 69-2 ¶ 9].
Magistrate Judge Bowler signed the search warrant on April 5, 2024, [ECF No. 69-1 at
1], and the warrant was executed four days later, on April 9, 2024, [ECF No. 69-4]. On April 25,
2024, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Kerrissey with three counts of wire
fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. [ECF No. 17]. On October 30, 2025, Kerrissey filed the
instant motion to suppress, [ECF No. 69], which the government opposed on November 13,
2025, [ECF No. 70].
II. 	DISCUSSION
Kerrissey makes two arguments for suppression. First, he argues that the affidavit failed
to establish “a timely and particularized nexus” between the alleged PPP-loan offenses and the
property searched because the affidavit offered no basis to believe that digital records or
proceeds of the alleged 2020–2021 PPP-loan scheme remained at the property in 2024. [ECF
No. 69 at 6–7]. Second, he argues that the attachment describing the items to be seized was
overbroad and violated the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement. [ECF No. 69 at 7–8].
A. 	Nexus
“A warrant application must demonstrate probable cause to believe that (1) a crime has
been committed—the ‘commission’ element, and (2) enumerated evidence of the offense will be
found at the place to be searched—the so-called ‘nexus’ element.” United States v. Rodrigue,
560 F.3d 29, 32–33 (1st Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Ribeiro, 397 F.3d 43, 48 (1st Cir.
2005)). “In determining whether probable cause is established in the affidavit, the magistrate
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(and the reviewing court) is required to make a practical, common-sense decision whether, given
all the circumstances, there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence will be found in the
place described.” United States v. White, 766 F.2d 22, 25 (1st Cir. 1985) (first citing Illinois v.
Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983); and then citing United States v. Drake, 673 F.2d 15, 18 (1st Cir.
1982)); see also United States v. Faust, 853 F.3d 39, 46 (1st Cir. 2017) (“To satisfy the nexus
element, the warrant application ‘must give someone of “reasonable caution” reason to believe
that evidence of a crime will be found at the place to be searched.’” (quoting Ribeiro, 397 F.3d at
49)). A “nexus . . . need not, and often will not, rest on direct observation, but rather ‘can be
inferred from the type of crime, the nature of the items sought, the extent of an opportunity for
concealment and normal inferences as to where a criminal would hide [evidence of a crime].’”
United States v. Roman, 942 F.3d 43, 51 (1st Cir. 2019) (quoting United States v. Feliz, 182 F.3d
82, 88 (1st Cir. 1999)). Courts “consider whether the ‘totality of the circumstances’ stated in the
affidavit demonstrates probable cause to search the premises.” United States v. Tiem Trinh, 665
F.3d 1, 10 (1st Cir. 2011) (quoting United States v. Barnard, 299 F.3d 90, 93 (1st Cir. 2002)).
“A magistrate’s ‘determination of probable cause should be paid great deference.’” Gates, 462
U.S. at 236 (quoting Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 419 (1969)). A reviewing court’s
“duty is simply to ensure that the magistrate [judge] had a substantial basis for . . . conclud[ing]
that probable cause existed.” United States v. Bregu, 948 F.3d 408, 417 (1st Cir. 2020) (citation
modified).
Here, the magistrate judge had a substantial basis for concluding that probable cause
existed to believe that evidence of the alleged wire fraud would be found at the property.
Specifically, the affidavit contained information linking Kerrissey’s three businesses to the
property, including the use of the property as a business address for the businesses and the
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submission of PPP loan applications from the property. [ECF No. 69-2 ¶¶ 82–86]. To be sure, a
considerable amount of time had passed between Kerrissey’s alleged submission of the loan
applications in 2020–2021 and the warrant application in 2024. But assessing the staleness of an
affidavit is not a matter of “counting the number of days between the events described in the
affidavit and a warrant’s issuance, as a merchant would beads on an abacus,” Tiem Trinh, 665
F.3d at 13; rather, the Court considers “various factors, including ‘the nature of the information,
the nature and characteristics of the suspected criminal activity, and the likely endurance of the
information’ in assessing the information’s ripeness,” id. (quoting United States v. Morales-
Aldahondo, 524 F.3d 115, 119 (1st Cir. 2008)). The warrant here “primarily sought business
records,” which, as “repositories of historical facts . . . are largely immune from claims of
staleness.” United States v. Floyd, 740 F.3d 22, 34 (1st Cir. 2014). Based on the totality of the
information contained in the affidavit, there was probable cause to believe that the enumerated
evidence of the alleged wire fraud would be found at Kerrissey’s residence, even several years
after the submission of the allegedly fraudulent loan applications.
B. 	Particularity
The Fourth Amendment requires that warrants “particularly describ[e] the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “The particularity
requirement demands that a valid warrant: (1) must supply enough information to guide and
control the executing agent’s judgment in selecting where to search and what to seize, and (2)
cannot be too broad in the sense that it includes items that should not be seized.” United States
v. Lindsey, 3 F.4th 32, 40 (1st Cir. 2021) (quoting United States v. Kuc, 737 F.3d 129, 133 (1st
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Cir. 2013)). The purpose of this requirement “is to prevent wide-ranging general searches by the
police.” Id. (quoting United States v. Moss, 936 F.3d 52, 58 (1st Cir. 2019)).
The warrant here, and, specifically, the attachment describing the items to be seized,
satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement. Kerrissey argues, first, that the
attachment was overbroad because it authorized the seizure of “‘all records, in whatever form’
for multiple businesses without any temporal limitation.” [ECF No. 69 at 7]. This argument
ignores the plain language of the warrant, which limited the records to be seized to violations of
a certain statute during a defined time period, that is “evidence, fruits, or instrumentalities of
violations of 18 U.S.C. [§] 1343” from “April 2020 until the present.” [ECF No. 69-3 at 1–3].
Contrary to Kerrissey’s argument, the Court must read this “broad first clause, which identifie[d]
the criminal offense[] that the target evidence was expected to establish” in light of the more
“detailed and particularized” subclauses that follow, whose particularity Kerrissey does not
specifically challenge. Kuc, 737 F.3d at 133; see also United States v. Falon, 959 F.2d 1143,
1148 (1st Cir. 1992) (noting that “when an individual’s allegedly fraudulent business activities
are centered in his home . . . the broad categories of items that may be seized . . . must be
sufficiently linked to the alleged criminal activity so as to distinguish them from innocent,
personal materials”); United States v. Klyushin, 643 F. Supp. 3d 261, 270 (D. Mass. 2022)
(collecting decisions upholding warrants of similar structure against particularity challenges).
Kerrissey also takes issue with the attachment’s authorization to seize “all computer
hardware, computer software, and storage media reasonably believed to belong to Kerrissey or
Buckman,” calling this a “boundless grant of authority.” [ECF No. 69 at 8]. This argument,
however, ignores the very next sentence of the attachment, which subjects the off-site searching
of these items to the same temporal and subject-matter limitations as the searches of the other
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items. [ECF No. 69-3 at 3]; see also Kuc, 737 F.3d at 133 (“[A] warrant’s language must be read
in context.”); Klyushin, 643 F. Supp. 3d at 270 (upholding warrants that “directed Apple to
broadly turn over to the government an iCloud account” but “only authorized the government to
search for specific categories of information from that seized account”). Kerrissey’s argument
that the warrant was overbroad fails.
C. 	Good Faith Exception
Even when a search warrant is defective, the Supreme Court has held that suppression is
not required if law enforcement “acting with objective good faith has obtained a search warrant
from a judge or magistrate and acted within its scope.” United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897, 920
(1984). “[T]he officer’s reliance on the magistrate’s probable-cause determination and on the
technical sufficiency of the warrant he issues must be objectively reasonable.” Id. at 922. The
government bears the burden of demonstrating the affiant’s good faith. See United States v.
Vigeant, 176 F.3d 565, 572 (1st Cir. 1999).
Kerrissey argues that the good-faith exception does not apply because the warrant’s
“staleness” and “sweeping overbreadth” were evident on its face. [ECF No. 69 at 8]. The
government counters that “[t]he agents provided a detailed affidavit to a magistrate judge, the
warrant included subject matter and temporal limitations on what could be searched, and the
agents acted in accordance with the parameters of the warrant issued.” [ECF No. 70 at 7].
The Court agrees with the government. Even if the magistrate judge’s finding of
probable cause had been improper, the affidavit supporting the warrant, which provided robust
grounds to believe that evidence of the offense would be found at the property, was not “so
lacking in indicia of probable cause as to render official belief in its existence entirely
unreasonable.” Leon, 468 U.S. at 923 (quoting Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590, 610–11 (1975)
(Powell, J., concurring in part)). Similarly, even if the warrant had been overbroad, it was not
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“so facially deficient . . . in failing to particularize . . . the things to be seized . . . that the
executing officers [could not] reasonably presume it to be valid.” Id.; cf. Groh v. Ramirez, 540
U.S. 551, 557 (2005) (finding warrant “plainly invalid . . . ‘because it provided no description of
the type of evidence sought’”). Accordingly, even assuming that the warrant violated the Fourth
Amendment, the officers’ reliance on it was objectively reasonable.
III. 	CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, Kerrissey’s motion to suppress evidence from the search
of 20 Sunrise Avenue in Plymouth, Massachusetts, [ECF No. 69], is DENIED.
SO ORDERED.
November 20, 2025 	/s/ Allison D. Burroughs
ALLISON D. BURROUGHS
U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE
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