### The Honorab le Jean C. Hamilton, United States District Judge 1 

### for the Eastern District of Missouri. ___________ No. 95-3365

___________ United States of America, * * Appellee, * * Appeal from the United States v. * District Court for the * Eastern District of Missouri. Shirley Mora, * * Appellant. *

___________ Submitted: March 12, 1996 Filed: April 19, 1996

___________ Before MAGILL, FLOYD R. GIBSON, and HEANEY, Circuit Judges.

___________ MAGILL, Circuit Judge.
Shirley M ora appeals her conviction on four counts of mail fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341 and 1342, arguing that the district court 1 abused its discretion in allowing the government to present "other crimes" evidence. We affirm.

I.

In Decemb er 1988, Mora's father passed away, leaving Mora an estate which included a hous e on Red Bud Drive in Pacific, Missouri. The house, valued at $159,000, w as insured against fire loss by the Safeco Insurance Company of America (Safeco). On

### This figure was later increased to $238,556.75. 2 

### -2- April 2, 1993, the house was destroyed by fire.

Mora subm itted claims to Safeco for the loss of the house and it s contents i n the amount of $211,720.75. Safeco denied her claims, and on 2 January 4, 1994, she brought an unsuccessful civil suit against Safeco to recover her losses.

On Februa ry 2, 1994, Mora was indicted by a federal grand jury o n four counts of mail fraud. While the indictment alleged that the fire tha t destroyed Mora's house had been set, it did not allege that Mora had set the fire or caused it to be set, and arson was not directly at issue in any of the four counts. The indictment did allege that, as part of a n elabo rate scheme to defraud Safeco, Mora knowingly made a host o f misrepresentations to Safeco. First, although Mora did not live at the Re d Bud Drive residence, a requirement for coverage under the Safeco policy, she informed Safeco t hat she did. To bolster her claim that the fire had displaced her, Mora also rented a hotel room, and later a temporar y apartm ent and furniture. Finally, because the Safeco policy furthe r limite d coverage to Mora's personal property, Mora claimed that th e personal property of acquaintances, who were res iding at the Red Bud Drive house, actually belonged to her.
Prior to trial, Mora filed a motion in limine to exclude evidence of arson, which was denied by the district court. During the course of the trial, Mora made ongoing objections to evidence regarding the cause of the fire and her knowledg e of the arson. Mora's objections were overruled by the district court, and the government introduced evidence that the fire had an incendiary cause, that Mora had experienced financial distress prio r to the arson, creating a motive for fraud, and that Mora had known that

### For example, the government introduced evidence tha t 3 

### accelerants had been used at the fire scene, that Mora had lost a large amount of money on bad i nvestments and had repeatedly tried, uns uccessfully, to sell the Red Bud Drive property, and that , immediately before the fire, Mora arranged to fly to Texas t o visit her da ughter, stayed several days, and flew back to Missour i immediately after the fire. -3- the arson was to occur. Following a jury trial, Mora was conv icted of all 3 four counts of mail fraud, and she was sentenced to twenty-seven month s imprisonment for each count, to run concurrently.

Mora brings this timely appeal, arguing that Federal Rules o f Evidence 403 and 404 should have prevented the g overnment from introducing evid ence of arson and Mora's foreknowledge of the arson, because th e evidence was irrelevant and prejudicial.

II.
We review the district court's admission of other crimes eviden ce for abuse o f discretion. See United States v. Smith , 49 F.3d 475, 478 (8t h Cir. 1995). The admissibility of other crimes evidence is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), which provides:
Evidence of other crimes , wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove t he character of a person in order to show action i n conformity therewith. It may, however, be admissib le for other purp oses, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent , preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident . . . .

We have crafted a fou r-part test to determine if other crimes evidence is admissible under Rule 404(b). Such evidence is admissible when: (1) the evidence of the bad act or other crime is relevant to a material issu e raised at trial; (2) the bad act or crime is similar in kind and reasonabl y close in time to the crime

### -4-

charged; (3) there is sufficient evidence to sup port a finding by the jury that the defendant committed the other act or cr ime; and (4) the potential prejud ice of the evidence does not substantially outweigh its probativ e value. U nited States v. DeAngelo , 13 F.3d 1228, 1231 (8th Cir.), cert . denied , 114 S. Ct. 27 17 (1994); see also United States v. Mejia-Uribe , 75 F.3d 395, 397-98 (8th Cir. 1996); Smith , 49 F.3d at 478. All of thes e factors have been met in this case.

A. Relevance
Relevance of evidence "is established by any showing, however s light, that [the evidence] makes it more or less likely that the defendan t committed the crime in question." United States v. Casares-Cardenas , 14 F.3d 1283, 1287 (8th Cir.) (construing Federal Rule of Evidence 401), cert . denied , 115 S. Ct. 14 7 (1994). For a jury to decide if Mora had intended to "devise [a] scheme or artifice to defraud" her insurance company, 1 8 U.S.C. § 1341, it is highly relevant whether the fire was a serendipitous accident, or whether it was a planned event. If Mora knew that the fire
was to take place, her misrepresentations to Safeco were more likel y intent ional and part of a coordinated plan, rather than inadvertent , isolated misstatements.
B. Closeness in time and similarity
AlthoughMora apparently concedes that the arson and mail frau d occurred closely toge ther in time, see Appellant's Br. at 18, she asserts that "the of fenses are not similar." Id. For this evidence to b e admissible, however, the prior acts "need not be duplicates of the one for whichthe defendant is now being tried," United States v. Lloyd , 71 F.3d 1256, 1265 (7th Cir. 1995) (quotations and emphasis omitted) (evidence tha t defendant had been target of assassination attem pts relevant to his motive to possess firearms), because the "admissibility of other crimes evidence

### -5-

depends on the nature and purpose of the evidence." Mejia-Uribe , 75 F.3d at 398. Here, evidence that Mora withheld information about arson fro m Safeco is sufficiently similar to the charge that she misrepresented her claims to Safeco to help prove her intent to defraud, and satisfies this prong of the test.
C. Sufficient evidence

While conceding that "from the evidence, it was reasonable t o co nclude that arson caused the fire," Appellant's Br. at 16, an d compla ining that the "sheer voluminosity of [evidence of arson] wa s overwh elminglypersuasive and convincing that someone was guilty of th e horrible crime of ars on, and that someone was Shirley Mora," Appellant's Reply Br. at 7, Mora nevertheless argues that "the government did not offe r any evidence which indicated that Appellant part icipated in the offense of arson." Appellant's Br. at 17.

Mora was not indicted for the crime of arson, however, and th e government never set out to prove that she was guilty of arson. Rather, to prove that Mora had committed mail fraud, the government introduce d other crimes evidence that Mora knew that her ho use was to be destroyed by arson. For this evidence to be relevant, the go vernment had the burden of proving, by a prepond erance of evidence, that Mora had this foreknowledge of ars on. See Huddleston v. United States , 485 U.S. 681, 690 (1988 ) (burden of proof). T he government met this burden, most significantly by introducing evidence that Mora, prior to the arson, had arranged to be in Texas from March 30, 1993, until April 4, narrowly bracketing the arso n date of April 3. The government's post-arson ev idence, showing the extent to which Mora immedia tely attempted to misrepresent her losses to Safeco, also tended to prove a well-developed plan based on foreknowledge of the arson.

### -6- D. Prejudice

Fi nally, Mora argues that evidence of arson and her knowledge o f arson was unduly prejudicial, and was inadmissible under both Federal Rule s of Evidence 404(b) and 403. We disagree. This Court has "held that the juryin a criminal case is entitled to know about the context of a crime and any events that help explain the context." DeAngelo , 13 F.3d at 1232. As noted above, the evidence admitted was highly relevant to the context of Mora's commission of mail fraud. While we agree with Mora that arson is a "heinous[,] . . . egregious and abhorrent" crime, Appellant's Br. at 22, we do not believe that its unfairly prejudicial impact, if any , "substantially outwei ghed" its relevance in this case. See Fed. R. Evid. 403. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
A true copy.

Attest:
CLERK, U. S. COURT OF APPEALS, EIGHTH CIRCUIT.