Opinion ID: 204150
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Bribery Charge Against Morales

Text: Count 20 charged both Morales and Alfonzo with aiding and abetting each other in bribing, and with directly and indirectly bribing and attempting to bribe, Torres, the FSA Program Director. The substantive offense against Morales was a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(1); the aiding and abetting offense was a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2. The bribery charged was promising $130,000, and giving $18,000 in cash, to Torres to influence him to approve and authorize disbursement of unqualified loans to cattlemen in Arecibo. Morales argues that even if there were enough evidence that Alfonzo made a direct cash payment of $18,000 to Torres and forgave a $50,000 debt, there was insufficient evidence that she was directly involved or that she knew any money she was earning would be used to pay a bribe to Torres. Of course, she need not have actually been the person to pay the bribe to be culpable, see United States v. Dixon, 658 F.2d 181, 191 (3d Cir.1981), and she does not contend that. More specifically, she argues there was testimony that she was not present at the meeting where the scheme was hatched and that her arrangement with Irizarry was not sufficient to show her involvement with the scheme to bribe Torres. The mere fact that she and Torres were married alone would not be sufficient. But there was more evidence than that, and it was sufficient. The government introduced circumstantial evidence showing that Alfonzo coordinated the criminal scheme with Torres and Morales, and sent the cases to the Arecibo office for Morales to process. At the Arecibo office, Morales compiled the fraudulent loan applications, inflated the claimed damages, and submitted falsified documents to substantiate the claimed losses. There is also evidence showing that Alfonzo told Torres that he would get paid little by little as the cases were closed, and that Morales deducted money from the accounts to pay Torres. This is sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that Morales consciously shared Alfonzo's knowledge of the scheme to defraud the FSA, and worked to further the scheme by processing numerous FSA applications with inflated damages and falsified invoices.