Opinion ID: 629120
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Provisions of the bill, as reported

Text: 35 Part C adds a new section 666 to title 18, United States Code. Subsection (a) makes it a Federal crime for an officer, employee or agent of an organization or of a State or local government agency that receives benefits in excess of $10,000 per calendar year pursuant to a Federal program to steal, embezzle, obtain by fraud, willfully misapply or otherwise knowingly convert without authority property valued at $5,000 or more.... The terms agent, organization, government agency, and local are defined in subsection (d) and require no further explication. The Committee intends that the term Federal program involving a grant, a contract, a subsidy, a loan, a guarantee, insurance, or another form of Federal assistance be construed broadly, consistent with the purpose of this section to protect the integrity of the vast sums of money distributed through Federal programs from theft, fraud, and undue influence by bribery. 36 S.Rep. No. 225, 98th Cong., 2d Sess. 369-70 (1984), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1984, pp. 3182, 3510, 3511. 37 Although appellant attempts to divine from this statement the limitation described above, we fail to see any implication, much less a direct expression, of such an intent. Indeed, most of the Report's discussion relates to thefts rather than bribes. Appellant's main focus, however, is on the final sentence of the first paragraph in the quoted text, which states that Section 666 was derived from S. 1630 ... approved by the Committee in the 97th Congress. This sentence is accompanied by the quoted footnote referring to S.Rep. No. 97-307, the Committee Report accompanying S. 1630. In this Report, appellant does find remarks supportive of his position 1 and asks us to read Section 666(b) in light of those remarks. We need not pause to question whether this derivative legislative history is the extraordinary showing of contrary intentions required by Albertini because the argument is fatally flawed for other reasons. Both the section of S. 1630 relating to theft and that relating to bribery included specific limitations that are not in Section 666. Section 1731(c)(34)'s prohibition on thefts was thus limited to thefts of property [of] the [federally funded] program. More importantly, Section 1751(c)(1)(I)'s prohibition on bribery was limited to payments to an agent or fiduciary of ... an organization charged ... with administering monies or property derived from a federal program, and the recipient's conduct is related to the administration of such program.... In short, the legislative history of S. 1630 is unhelpful because the proposed legislation actually contained express limitations to property or conduct related to a program directly funded by the federal government. The failure of the 98th Congress to include such a limitation in Section 666 hardly reflects an intent helpful to Coyne--in fact a contrary inference can be drawn--much less an extraordinary showing of such an intent. 38 In so concluding, we agree with the other circuits who have considered the question. In United States v. Little, 889 F.2d 1367 (5th Cir.1989), cert. denied, 495 U.S. 933, 110 S.Ct. 2176, 109 L.Ed.2d 505 (1990), the Fifth Circuit held that if the agency received $10,000 in any given year, then the agents were subject to Section 666. There is no requirement that the particular program be the recipient of the federal funds. Id. at 1369 (citing United States v. Westmoreland, 841 F.2d 572, 576 (5th Cir.) (stating that Section 666 did not require the government to trace federal funds to the tainted transactions of a local government agency covered by the statute), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 820, 109 S.Ct. 62, 102 L.Ed.2d 39 (1988)); see also United States v. Simas, 937 F.2d 459, 463 (9th Cir.1991). 39