Opinion ID: 534779
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Amount to Continued Criminal Activity

Text: 29 Predicate acts amount to continued criminal activity when they form a closed period of repeated conduct, which the Court defined in H.J. as follows: 30 A party alleging a RICO violation may demonstrate continuity over a closed period by proving a series of related predicates extending over a substantial period of time. Predicate acts extending over a few weeks or months and threatening no future criminal conduct do not satisfy this requirement: Congress was concerned in RICO with long-term criminal conduct. 31 Id. 109 S.Ct. at 2902. The Court applied this standard to Northwestern Bell's alleged scheme to bribe members of a public commission in order to secure higher phone rates, finding that the racketeering predicates [the bribes] occurred with some frequency over at least a six year period, which may be sufficient to satisfy the continuity requirement. In so finding, the Court did not allude to the other Morgan factors, such as the number of victims or the variety of the acts. See Swistock v. Jones, 884 F.2d 755, 758 (3d Cir.1989) (noting that the Supreme Court made no explicit reference in H.J. Inc. to the number of victims or the number of perpetrators as relevant factors in its discussion of continuity, despite the fact that all of Northwestern Bell's customers were arguable victims of the alleged scheme to raise rates.). H.J.'s approach leads to the conclusion that a plaintiff who alleges a high number of related predicate acts committed over a substantial period of time establishes that those acts amount to continued criminal activity, irrespective of the other Roeder/Morgan factors. See Walk v. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 890 F.2d 688, 690 (4th Cir.1989) (holding that [i]n light of H.J., Inc.'s special emphasis [on] the sheer duration of criminal activity ..., we conclude that activity continuing, as alleged here, for a period of ten years, must be considered to have 'extended over a substantial period of time,' hence to constitute long term conduct meeting the pattern requirement) (quoting H.J., 109 S.Ct. at 2902). 32 Here, Fleet alleges that 95 fraudulent mailings were sent over a four and one-half year period. Regardless of how we might have addressed this issue before H.J., we believe this is the type of long-term criminal conduct defined by the H.J. court as constituting continued criminal activity. The alleged criminal conduct spans years, not a few weeks or months. Keeping in mind Congress's natural and common sense approach to RICO's pattern element, H.J., 109 S.Ct. at 2899, we hold that Fleet's allegations are sufficient to establish continuity. 1 33 Had the number of acts alleged by Fleet been few or the period of time short, the predicate acts would not have amounted to continued criminal activity. This would be true even if other Morgan factors had pointed toward a finding of continuity. Too few acts would suggest that the defendants were engaged in only sporadic activity, id. 109 S.Ct. at 2900, and too short a period of time would suggest that defendants were not engaged in long-term criminal conduct. Id. at 2902. See, e.g., Roeder v. Alpha Industries, Inc., 814 F.2d 22, 31 (1st Cir.1987) (single bribe paid in three installments over a short period of time does not establish continuity); Parcoil Corp. v. Nowsco Well Service, 887 F.2d 502 (4th Cir.1989) (seventeen falsified reports sent over a period of four months do not establish continuity); Service Engineering Co. v. Southwest Marine, Inc. 719 F.Supp. 1500 (N.D.Cal.1989) (submission of one false form and a few misleading letters over a few weeks or months does not establish continuity); Eastern Corporate Fed. Cred. v. Peat, Marwick, Etc., 639 F.Supp. 1532 (D.Mass.1986) (three acts of mail fraud over two month period do not establish continuity). 34