What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

Opinion:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Frank Victor SCARAMUZZO, aka Frank Moore, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 74-2164.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Oct. 18, 1974.
Stephen Stein (argued), Goodman, Snyder & Gang, Las Vegas, Nev., for defendant-appellant.
Stuart W. Rudnick, Special Atty. (appeared), Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, U. S. Dept, of Justice, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-appellee.
OPINION
Before BROWNING, DUNIWAY, and INGRAHAM, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Appellant was convicted of devising a scheme to defraud the Central Telephone Company in Las Vegas, Nevada, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. The evidence established that appellant avoided toll charges for at least one long distance call from Las Vegas to" Los Angeles by first placing a toll-free call to an area code 800 number subscribed to by the American Express Company in Phoenix, Arizona, and then diverting that call to the Los Angeles number by use of an electronic device called a “blue box.”
There is no merit in appellant’s contention that 18 U.S.C. § 1343 does not apply to frauds involving telephone communications. This court has twice affirmed convictions under 18 U.S.C. § 1343 in which interstate telephone calls played an integral role in the scheme to defraud, Battaglia v. United States, 349 F.2d 556 (9th Cir. 1965); Spindler v. United States, 336 F.2d 678 (9th Cir. 1964), and the legislative history of the 1956 amendment to the statute demonstrates that Congress intended to reach frauds perpetrated by telephone. H.R. Rep. No. 2385, 84th Cong., 2d Sess. (1956), 1956 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News, p. 3091.
Alternatively, appellant argues that the statute must be read to apply only to frauds committed on the recipient of the message, not the transmitter. We agree with the conclusion of the Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Tenth Circuits that this contention is without merit. See Scott v. United States, 448 F.2d 581, 583 n.5 (5th Cir. 1971); Brandon v. United States, 382 F.2d 607, 611 (10th Cir. 1967).
We are not impressed with appellant’s suggestion at oral argument that the scheme to defraud may have been completed before any interstate transmission of sounds or signals occurred, but, in any event, this contention was not properly raised in the district court.
Affirmed.
Honorable Joe McDonald Ingraliam, Senior Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting by designation.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officialss"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0