In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                For the Seventh Circuit
                    ____________________
No. 22-2773
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                  Plaintiff-Appellee,
                                v.

PAUL S. OSTERMAN,
                                              Defendant-Appellant.
                    ____________________

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the
                  Eastern District of Wisconsin,
         No. 1:21-cr-110 — William C. Griesbach, Judge.
                    ____________________

   ARGUED NOVEMBER 29, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 1, 2024
               ____________________

   Before RIPPLE, SCUDDER, JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judges.
    JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Circuit Judge. A detective in Oneida
County, Wisconsin, applied for a warrant so he could place a
GPS tracker on Paul Osterman’s truck. After monitoring the
truck—a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amend-
ment—authorities prosecuted Osterman for sex trafficking a
child. Osterman later learned that some information the de-
tective included in the affidavit seeking the warrant was in-
correct. To Osterman, this meant the affidavit failed to
2                                                   No. 22-2773

establish probable cause for the search, so he asked the district
court to suppress the fruits of the search.
    After an evidentiary hearing, the district court held that
the affidavit established probable cause despite its inaccura-
cies. The court therefore denied Osterman’s motion to sup-
press, and Osterman appeals. We agree with Osterman that
the detective acted recklessly when he failed to correct the af-
fidavit. But we have taken an independent look at the affida-
vit, as we must, and we conclude that it establishes probable
cause even without the misstatements. For that reason, we are
compelled to affirm.
                                I
     MeetMe.com is an online-dating website. When the web-
site’s administrators suspect that MeetMe users are targeting
children for sexual exploitation, the administrators must file
a “CyberTip” with the National Center for Missing and Ex-
ploited Children. Frequently Asked Questions, NAT’L CTR. FOR
MISSING      AND       EXPLOITED      CHILDREN,       https://re-
port.cybertip.org/faqs (last visited July 17, 2024). The center
manages a centralized system for reporting online child ex-
ploitation, and when a CyberTip involves a child in immedi-
ate or impending harm, it forwards the tip to law enforcement
for investigation. Id.
    In this case, Detective Chad Wanta of the Oneida County
Sheriff’s Office received eight CyberTips. The tips reported
strikingly similar instances of misconduct on MeetMe.com
between January 2018 and December 2019. All the users had
MeetMe usernames beginning with the letter J, including var-
iations of “Jared,” “Jones,” and “Jacob.” In addition, each user
sent messages on the website looking for “a much younger
No. 22-2773                                                  3

girl” and offering money to meet with one for sexual encoun-
ters.
    The CyberTips further disclosed that all but one of the
messages originated from MeetMe users who used wireless
internet signals hosted by companies in Rhinelander, Wiscon-
sin. Specifically, two tips noted the user accessed publicly
available wi-fi provided by a McDonalds at 25 S. Stevens
Street. Three tips reported the user accessed public wi-fi of-
fered by a laundromat called Modes, Machines & More LLC,
at 2100 Lincoln Street. And two other tips explained the user
accessed a private wi-fi network hosted by Northwoods Com-
munications Technologies LLC (now “Northwoods Connect
– High Speed Internet”), an internet provider then located at
2151 N. Chippewa Drive.
    In sum, seven of the eight CyberTips Detective Wanta re-
ceived involved similar usernames, sexual propositions, loca-
tions, and wi-fi access. The eighth tip was different, but not by
much: it linked the suspect to a wi-fi hotspot not in Rhine-
lander, Wisconsin, but in Hillside, Illinois.
    After receiving the CyberTips, Detective Wanta launched
an investigation. He targeted the Rhinelander companies
listed in the tips. Hoping to identify the MeetMe user who ac-
cessed Northwoods Communications’ private wi-fi network,
Detective Wanta interviewed the owner and operator of
Northwoods Communications: Osterman. Osterman told De-
tective Wanta it was impossible to identify the user by the IP
address provided in the CyberTip because the IP address
could have been used by any one of his company’s 400 cus-
tomers.
4                                                     No. 22-2773

    Undeterred, Detective Wanta shifted his focus to a
MeetMe user who called himself Brad Jones. The relevant
CyberTip detailed an instant message exchange between
Jones and a child that occurred on July 4, 2019. Near the be-
ginning of the exchange, Jones apparently thought the person
was older and offered her money to help locate a younger girl.
But later, Jones realized he was talking to a twelve-year-old
girl who lived in Chicago, Illinois. He told the girl he would
drive from Wisconsin to Chicago that night so they could
meet.
    Here we pause to introduce two facts not in the affidavit.
First, Detective Wanta’s investigation revealed that Jones ac-
cessed three publicly available wi-fi hotspots: one in Antigo,
Wisconsin, a second in Gurnee, Illinois, and a third in Chi-
cago. And second, authorities later learned from the child vic-
tim that when Jones reached Chicago on July 4, he paid her
twenty-five dollars in exchange for sex. The CyberTip noted
that Jones traveled the next day, on July 5, to Hillside, Illinois,
where he connected to a public wi-fi hotspot hosted by a Hol-
iday Inn. Law enforcement later subpoenaed the Holiday Inn
for a list of guests who stayed in the hotel on July 5. Osterman
was among them.
    By this point in the investigation, Osterman’s profile had
popped up twice: at the Hillside Holiday Inn and in relation
to Northwoods Communications. But his connection to the
investigation did not end there. A few months after the Jones
incident, someone called the Rhinelander Police Department
to report a suspicious man who allegedly had been sitting in
a black pickup truck for several hours. Officers who arrived
on the scene discovered Osterman sitting in the truck using
two tablets and a cell phone within wi-fi range of Modes,
No. 22-2773                                                    5

Machines & More LLC—the same laundromat whose wi-fi
had been accessed by a MeetMe user in the CyberTips. When
the officers spoke with Osterman, he told them he owned an
internet company and was testing his competitor’s internet
speed.
    Believing these connections to be more than coincidence,
Detective Wanta secured a search warrant to track Oster-
man’s truck by GPS. The GPS data showed Osterman’s truck
was parked for several hours on different days at the McDon-
alds and laundromat described in the CyberTips. The data
also showed the truck was parked around other public wi-fi
locations in northern Wisconsin during the investigation.
    These discoveries aided the investigation, but the inaccu-
racies in the affidavit Detective Wanta submitted to secure the
warrant did not. In one paragraph, he wrongly suggested that
Jones had messaged the underaged girl through the Hillside
Holiday Inn’s wi-fi on July 4. In reality, no part of the conver-
sation took place through the hotel's wi-fi; instead, Jones
merely connected to it on July 5, not July 4. In another para-
graph, he wrote that a suspect accessed a wi-fi hotspot owned
by the Rhinelander McDonalds, even though the user ac-
cessed a hotspot in Texas. Detective Wanta discovered the
Texas error after he submitted the affidavit the first time, but
he failed to fix the error despite having an opportunity to do
so before each of the three times he renewed the warrant.
   These discrepancies led Osterman to file a motion to sup-
press after a grand jury indicted him on three charges: one
count of sex trafficking a child in violation of 

(a)(1), (b)(1), and (c); one count of using a computer to
persuade and induce/entice a minor to engage in unlawful
sexual activity in violation of 

(b); and one
6                                                  No. 22-2773

count of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual activity
with a minor in violation of 

(b).
    The district court held a Franks hearing on Osterman’s mo-
tion to suppress. See Franks v. Delaware, 

 (1978).
Detective Wanta appeared as the sole witness. He testified
about the Jones investigation and admitted that his affidavit
contained errors. When asked about the paragraph describing
how Jones sent messages through the Hillside Holiday Inn’s
wi-fi on July 4, 2019, Detective Wanta admitted that infor-
mation was incorrect because Jones merely accessed the ho-
tel’s wi-fi the next day, on July 5. The more accurate account,
he agreed, was that Jones started messaging on July 4, but
from a hotspot in Antigo, Wisconsin. The mix-up was inad-
vertent, Detective Wanta testified. Before receiving the
CyberTips, another agent told him Jones communicated with
the minor victim through wi-fi signals hosted by the Hillside
Holiday Inn. In addition, the CyberTips contained multiple
files but Detective Wanta did not look at every single file be-
cause, as a Wisconsin officer, he did not expect to investigate
a Chicago-area incident. In the end, Detective Wanta con-
ceded that he could have caught the error in the date had he
reviewed his records more thoroughly.
    The same was true for the geographical error. Detective
Wanta testified that, after submitting the affidavit, he learned
one of the MeetMe users linked to Rhinelander had been op-
erating out of Texas all along. Instead of fixing the affidavit,
however, he used it—unrevised—to renew the warrant three
times. Detective Wanta maintained that he never intention-
ally lied to or misled anyone.
  After the Franks hearing, the district court denied Oster-
man’s motion to suppress. In its ruling, the court credited
No. 22-2773                                                    7

Detective Wanta’s testimony and accepted the detective’s as-
sertion that the misstatements found their way into the affi-
davit by mistake. The court also weaved certain facts together
into a hypothetical affidavit to determine whether probable
cause existed, and the court concluded it did. After losing the
suppression battle, Osterman pled guilty to child sex traffick-
ing and received a sentence of 300 month’s imprisonment.
                               II
    “There is . . . a presumption of validity with respect to the
affidavit supporting the search warrant.” Franks, 

. But a defendant may overcome this presumption if the
defendant can prove a Franks violation occurred. See United
States v. Edwards, 

 (7th Cir. 2022). A Franks
violation is established “when the defendant shows by a pre-
ponderance of the evidence that (1) the affidavit in support of
the warrant contains false statements or misleading omis-
sions, (2) the false statements or omissions were made delib-
erately or with reckless disregard for the truth, and (3) prob-
able cause would not have existed without the false state-
ments and/or omissions.” United States v. Williams, 

 (7th Cir. 2013) (citing Franks, 

).
    When we are asked to review a district court’s factual find-
ings in the above inquiry, including findings related to delib-
erate or reckless disregard for the truth, we evaluate the find-
ings for clear error. See United States v. Spears, 

 (7th Cir. 2012). The factual findings will stand unless we
are “left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake
has been committed.” Williams, 

 (quoting
United States v. Sauerwein, 

 (7th Cir. 1993)). By
contrast, we undertake de novo review of legal determina-
tions, which includes the question of whether an affidavit
8                                                   No. 22-2773

establishes probable cause without the false statements or
omissions. Id. at 649.
    The parties do not dispute that the affidavit in this case
contained false statements. So our inquiry focuses on the sec-
ond and third elements necessary to prove a Franks violation.
To prove such a violation, and to prevail on his suppression
motion by extension, Osterman must demonstrate that Detec-
tive Wanta knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly made false
statements in the warrant affidavit. See United States v. Norris,

 (7th Cir. 2011). But that is not all. Oster-
man also must demonstrate that the false statements are ma-
terial. 

.
    As for the second Franks element, we conclude that Detec-
tive Wanta knowingly, intentionally, or recklessly left false in-
formation in the warrant affidavit. The district court found
the opposite: it held that Detective Wanta “did not know-
ingly, intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth,
include a false statement in his search warrant affidavit.” On
the record before us, this factual finding amounts to clear er-
ror because it is evident Detective Wanta acted recklessly in
drafting the warrant affidavit. He admitted that the para-
graph mistaking the suspect’s location for Rhinelander in-
stead of Texas could have been corrected since he had the ac-
curate information before renewing the warrant. When an of-
ficer continues a course despite having “serious doubts as to
the truth” or “obvious reasons to doubt” the accuracy of his
assertions, that is a reckless disregard for the truth. Betker v.
Gomez, 

 (7th Cir. 2012) (internal citations
omitted). There is no question that Detective Wanta’s conduct
falls into this category.
No. 22-2773                                                       9

    As for the third Franks element, our inquiry is whether the
inaccuracies in the affidavit are material to the probable cause
finding. If they are, as Osterman insists, his suppression mo-
tion should have been granted; if they are not, the district
court was right to deny the suppression motion. Although we
consider this question of materiality afresh in our de novo re-
view and therefore give no weight to the district court’s anal-
ysis, we treat the analysis of the judge who issued the warrant
quite differently. See United States v. Taylor, 

, 651-
52 (7th Cir. 2023). We pay “great deference to the issuing
judge’s finding of probable cause.” 

 at 652 (quoting United
States v. McIntire, 

 (7th Cir. 2008)) (internal
citations omitted). And we are mindful that “the task of the
issuing judge is simply to make a practical, commonsense de-
cision whether, given all the circumstances set forth in the af-
fidavit before him,” the issuing judge believes “there is a fair
probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be
found in a particular place.” 

 at 651 (quoting Illinois v. Gates,

 (1983)) (internal citations omitted). At the
end of the day, we will not disturb the issuing judge’s proba-
ble cause determination so long as the affidavit establishes
probable cause after we “eliminate the alleged false state-
ments [and] incorporate any allegedly omitted facts.” Betker,

. The resulting hypothetical affidavit then be-
comes the object of our probable cause analysis. 

    When we eliminate the false statements and add in the
omitted facts to which Osterman has drawn our attention, the
hypothetical affidavit still establishes probable cause. The hy-
pothetical affidavit identifies Osterman not only as a resident
of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, but also as the owner of North-
woods Connect, a Rhinelander company that was used mul-
tiple times by the MeetMe users suspected of targeting
10                                                   No. 22-2773

children for sexual exploitation. The hypothetical affidavit
also notes that Detective Wanta interviewed Osterman in con-
nection with the investigation since he owned the company.
From there, the affidavit goes on to explain that Rhinelander
police officers investigated a suspicious man who had been
sitting in his vehicle for hours. The man of course turned out
to be Osterman, who was sitting in his vehicle using two tab-
lets and a cell phone within wi-fi range of one of the establish-
ments referenced in the CyberTips. And perhaps most damn-
ing of all, Osterman stayed at the Hillside Holiday Inn on July
5—the same day that Jones, a MeetMe user known to have
contacted a child to arrange a sexual encounter the day before,
accessed the hotel’s wi-fi.
    This information is enough to support a probable cause
finding. It is true that correcting the geographical error could
have suggested there was more than one suspect. But the
judge issuing the warrant did not have to be certain Osterman
was the only suspect; the judge only needed enough infor-
mation to formulate a substantial belief that Osterman had
committed a crime and evidence of the crime would be found
by monitoring his truck. See United States v. Parra, 

 (7th Cir. 2005) (“So long as the totality of the circum-
stances, viewed in a common sense manner, reveals a proba-
bility or substantial chance of criminal activity on the sus-
pect’s part, probable cause exists.” (internal citation omitted)).
The affidavit provided at least that information if not more
absent its misstatements, thereby establishing probable cause.
See Betker, 

.
    Thus, although we agree with Osterman that Detective
Wanta acted recklessly when he failed to update the warrant
affidavit, suppression of the fruits of the GPS search remains
No. 22-2773                                               11

beyond reach to Osterman because the misstatements in the
affidavit are immaterial. Probable cause existed even without
them.
                                                AFFIRMED.