Opinion ID: 380089
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Admission of other acts against Quilici.

Text: 42 Quilici argues that it was error to admit against him the evidence about the Los Angeles checks that we have described in our statement of the facts. He argues that all of the Los Angeles events occurred before he became a director of the bank. In this, he is plainly wrong. As we have seen, he was listed as a director in April, 1977. He represented himself to the Bradford Trust to be secretary-treasurer of the Windward Bank in July of 1977. The Los Angeles checks began showing up in late July and several appeared in August. At least three of them could be found by the jury to be signed by Quilici. Some of the Los Angeles checks were issued at just the time when DeSaulniers was buying Columbus Associates and using a Windward check to pay part of the price. 43 We conclude that it was proper to permit the jury to consider the evidence about the Los Angeles checks in determining Quilici's motive, opportunity, intent, plan, knowledge or absence of mistake or accident, or other innocent intent. What happened with the Los Angeles checks is so similar to, and so closely contemporaneous with, the scheme charged in the indictment as to permit a jury to find that the Los Angeles checks were a part of a scheme concocted and carried out by Federbush and Quilici together. 44 Whether to admit such evidence is left to the sound discretion of the trial court. United States v. McDonald, 9 Cir., 1978, 576 F.2d 1350, 1356. The fact that most of the Los Angeles evidence related to Federbush does not make it inadmissible against Quilici. As the court said in United States v. Amrep Corp., 2 Cir., 1977, 560 F.2d 539, 545: 45 The admissibility of evidence in a mail fraud scheme involving two or more persons is determined similarly to that in a conspiracy. The acts and declarations of each party to the scheme made in furtherance or execution thereof are admissible against all. United States v. Grow, 394 F.2d 182, 203 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 840, 89 S.Ct. 118, 21 L.Ed.2d 111 (1968); United States v. Cohen, 516 F.2d 1358, 1364 (8th Cir. 1975); United States v. Cohen, 145 F.2d 82, 90 (2d Cir. 1944), cert. denied, 323 U.S. 799, 65 S.Ct. 553, 89 L.Ed. 637 (1945). So long as a transaction is within the general scope of a scheme on which all defendants had embarked, a defendant not directly connected with a particular fraudulent act is nonetheless responsible therefor if it was of the kind as to which all parties had agreed. United States v. Epstein, 154 F.2d 806, 809 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 328 U.S. 858, 66 S.Ct. 1350, 90 L.Ed. 1629 (1946); United States v. Cohen, supra, 145 F.2d at 90. 46 We made a similar statement of the law, citing some of the same cases, in United States v. Outpost Development Company, 9 Cir., 1977, 552 F.2d 868, 870. See also United States v. Weidman, 7 Cir., 1978, 572 F.2d 1199, 1201-1202. The court properly admitted the evidence concerning the Los Angeles checks, under the limiting instruction that we have quoted. 47