"To qualify as an 'organizer,' 'the defendant must have exercised some degree of control over others involved in the commission of the offense or he must have been responsible for organizing others for the purpose of carrying out the crime.' " United States v. Hernández, 964 F.3d 95, 102 (1st Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Carrero-Hernández, 643 F.3d 344, 350 (1st Cir. 2011)); see United States v. Tejada-Beltran, 50 F.3d 105, 112 (1st Cir. 1995) ("One may be classified as an organizer, though perhaps not as a leader, if he coordinates others so as to facilitate the commission of criminal activity."). The guidelines offer a list of factors that courts should consider in determining whether a defendant exercised such control within a particular organization.
These enhancements require both a status determination of whether the defendant acted as an "organizer or leader" or "manager or supervisor," as well as a determination of the scope of the criminal activity -- i.e., "that the criminal activity met either the numerosity or the extensiveness benchmarks established by the [G]uideline[s]." Ahmed, 51 F.4th at 28 (alterations in original) (quoting United States v. Hernández, 964 F.3d 95, 101 (1st Cir. 2020)).
"Th[e] enhancement requires a district court to make ‘both a status determination -- a finding that the defendant acted as an organizer or leader of the criminal activity -- and a scope determination -- a finding that the criminal activity met either the numerosity or the extensiveness benchmarks established by the [G]uideline[s].’ " United States v. Hernández, 964 F.3d 95, 101 (1st Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Tejada-Beltran, 50 F.3d 105, 111 (1st Cir. 1995) ). Ahmed concedes that the conspiracy met the Guidelines' numerosity requirement because it involved five or more participants, leaving only the district court's status determination at issue on appeal.