Opinion ID: 673830
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Western Union Records

Text: 40 The district court permitted the government to admit Western Union money transfer applications (MTAs), along with other Western Union records, for the purpose of proving the money laundering counts. The defendants 15 challenge the admission of the MTAs as a business record because the forms were filled out partially by nonemployees and thus were untrustworthy. The government responds that the business record exception to the hearsay rule, see Fed.R.Evid. 803(6), does not require that the record be filled out by an employee of the business. We disagree with the government's characterization of the business record rule, but we nevertheless affirm the ruling of the district court. 41 If the source of the information ... [is] an outsider to the chain producing [the] ... business record, rule 803(6) by itself does not permit admission of the information provided by the outsider. Grogg v. Missouri Pac. R.R., 841 F.2d 210, 214 (8th Cir.1988) (emphasis added). Because [i]f ... the supplier of the information does not act in the regular course [of business], an essential link is broken; the assurance of accuracy does not extend to the information itself, and the fact that it may be recorded with scrupulous accuracy is of no avail. Fed.R.Evid. 803(6), advisory committee note. The MTA requires senders to fill out their name, address, telephone number, the amount of money, and the name of the individual to whom the money is to be sent. After the sender fills out this preliminary information, the Western Union agent then completes the remainder of the form. 42 Because the senders, identified as Scott, Skeete, Harris, and Butler, frequently used aliases on the MTAs, the government offered expert testimony, lay testimony, eyewitness identification, and handwriting exemplars to establish that the defendants were the actual senders of the MTAs. The government established an adequate foundation, see Fed.R.Evid. 901(b)(1)-(3), upon which the jury might find that the signatures were those of defendants Scott, Skeete, Harris, and Butler. See United States v. Black, 767 F.2d 1334, 1342 (9th Cir.) (Rule 901 requires that the district court admit evidence if  'sufficient proof has been introduced so that a reasonable juror could find in favor of authenticity or identification' ) (citation omitted), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1022, 106 S.Ct. 574, 88 L.Ed.2d 557 (1985). 43 As the admission of a party-opponent, that portion of the Western Union MTAs allegedly completed by the defendants themselves was not hearsay. See Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2) (admissions of party-opponents are not hearsay). Thus, the remainder of the Western Union MTAs, as business records prepared in the regular course of business, present no hearsay problem. See Grogg, 841 F.2d at 214. Such a case as we have here, where the business record is in part completed by a party/defendant, does not present the hearsay problems of a business record completed by or with information supplied by a nonparty/nonemployee. Cf. Wilson v. Zapata Off-Shore Co., 939 F.2d 260, 271 (5th Cir.1991) (Double hearsay in the context of a business record exists when the record is prepared by an employee with information supplied by another person.). We find the MTAs presented no hearsay problem and were properly admitted into evidence by the district court.