Opinion ID: 572629
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Counts 5-7: Defrauding the City of Revenues

Text: 53 Counts 5, 6, and 7 of the indictment charged Paccione, Vulpis, and the corporate defendants with use of the mails in furtherance of 54 a scheme and artifice to defraud the City of New York of money and property, to wit, revenues from licensing fees and dumping fees to be derived from the lawful disposal of waste materials at the City-owned landfill at Fresh Kills. 55 In support of these counts, the government presented evidence that, by fraudulently procuring permits to deposit clean fill on the W & W property and using those permits to mask their dumping of nonclean waste--including putrescible garbage, building demolition debris, medical waste, and asbestos--in Arlington Yard, both on their property and on the CSX property, defendants deprived the City of the dumping fees to which it was entitled. In addition to lowering their own dumping costs, defendants allowed other companies to dump their nonclean waste in Arlington Yard and charged them $10 per cubic yard. The total amount of waste illegally dumped in Arlington Yard was some 550,000 cubic yards. Since the only other sizeable dump in the City was Fresh Kills and the prevailing dumping fee there during the pertinent period was $18.50 per cubic yard (and significantly higher for asbestos), the defendants' frauds cost the City more than $10 million in licensing fees. Even if one were to accept defendants' argument that some licenses were acquired that permitted the dumping of some 340,000 cubic yards of clean fill, the net loss to the City, considering the total amount dumped in Arlington Yard, was several million dollars. 56 Defendants make two additional arguments with respect to counts 5-7 that need not detain us long. First, they contend that the government's proof of mailing under counts 5 and 6 was insufficient because the alleged mailings (consisting of permits applied for by A & A) were from CDOT to CDOS, and defendants had not been informed that such mailings would occur. To come within § 1341, however, a mailing need not be by the defendant himself, so long as it was reasonably foreseeable by the defendant and furthered his fraudulent scheme. Pereira v. United States, 347 U.S. 1, 8-9, 74 S.Ct. 358, 362-63, 98 L.Ed. 435 (1954); United States v. Bronston, 658 F.2d 920, 927 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 915, 102 S.Ct. 1769, 72 L.Ed.2d 174 (1982). There can be no serious doubt that both of these requirements were met here. 57 Second, defendants argue that the City failed to prove any cognizable loss of dumping fees because defendants had no obligation to dump at Fresh Kills. We are unpersuaded. Fresh Kills was the largest dump site in the City. Defendants and other companies that used the A & A illegal dump site had previously dumped at Fresh Kills, and the government presented evidence showing that City revenues from that facility declined precipitously during the time of operation of the A & A dump. It was within the province of the jury to consider these facts, as well as the additional expense that would have been incurred by carters traveling to dump outside of the City, and to infer that defendants' conduct cost the City fees it would otherwise have received. 58