Opinion ID: 752178
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Judgment of Acquittal on Mail Fraud Counts

Text: 55 The Government cross-appeals the district court's judgment of acquittal for Jack on counts 2-5 and 7 after the jury found him guilty on those counts. These mail fraud counts were predicated on the mailing of checks to Beech Aircraft Acceptance Corporation as payment for the First American-owned King Air jet. The district court accepted Jack's argument that there was insufficient evidence to support conviction on these counts because the checks followed the achievement of the fraud's object (receiving interim payments from Aetna), and that they were thus not necessary to the scheme. We review the grant of the judgment of acquittal de novo, drawing all reasonable factual inferences in favor of the jury's guilty verdict. See United States v. Massey, 89 F.3d 1433, 1439 (11th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 983, 136 L.Ed.2d 865 (1997); United States v. Garcia, 13 F.3d 1464, 1473 (11th Cir.1994). We reverse. 56 A mailing is of course one element of mail fraud. See United States v. Brown, 40 F.3d 1218, 1221 (11th Cir.1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1092, 115 S.Ct. 1815, 131 L.Ed.2d 738, and cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1121, 115 S.Ct. 1985, 131 L.Ed.2d 872 (1995). The mailing may be perfectly innocent as long as it is incidental to an essential part of the scheme to defraud or a step in the plot. Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705, 714, 109 S.Ct. 1443, 1449, 103 L.Ed.2d 734 (1989). The mailing can, therefore, follow the achievement of the object of the fraud, since it may be essential, for example, to avoid detection or to lull the victim into complacency. United States v. Allen, 76 F.3d 1348, 1363 (5th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 121, 136 L.Ed.2d 71 (1997). 57 The evidence at trial was sufficient to convict Jack of the plane payment-based counts. The jury could reasonably have disagreed with the district judge that the fraud was complete before the payment checks were mailed. The evidence supports the inference that the fraudulent scheme was not one to obtain a single interim Medicare payment, as the district judge concluded, but an ongoing one to enjoy private airplane travel at Medicare expense. Under this view of the evidence, the necessity of the payments is evident: No payments, no plane. No plane, no Medicare-funded junkets to Cozumel. That the Millses could have made the same junket in a leased plane, as the district judge observed, is beside the point; that is not our case, and if it were, the mailing of the lease payments would play the same essential role. 58 This case is indeed analogous to Schmuck. Schmuck allegedly engaged in a long-running scheme to buy used cars, roll back their odometers, and sell the cars to dealers at inflated prices. Mail fraud charges against Schmuck rested on the dealers' mailing of title applications to state authorities after the purchase. The Supreme Court rejected the argument that these mailings were not a proper basis because they followed the achievement of the scheme's object. The evidence showed, the Court reasoned, a scheme that extended beyond the sale of a single car. Therefore, even if the mailing were unnecessary to the fraudulent sale just completed, it was essential to future sales because without it the scheme could not survive. See Schmuck, 489 U.S. at 714, 109 S.Ct. at 1449-50. Likewise, here the payments were not essential to any portion of the fraud just completed, whether the object is a particular personal plane trip or a bloated Medicare check. But they were essential to the ongoing fraud, since without the possession of the plane the fraud would have collapsed. 59 We therefore conclude that the evidence was sufficient to convict Jack of mail fraud on counts 2-5 and 7.