Opinion ID: 795347
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Intent to Obtain

Text: 13 The second part of Males' argument is that the jury should have been instructed that it could only convict him if it found that he intended to obtain his victim's money. That is, if the jury found that his intent was only to freeze Agent Keeley's account temporarily, and not to transfer the money to himself or an accomplice or to remove any money from Agent Keeley's account permanently, then he could not be convicted of wire fraud. Males cites several cases from our sister circuits in support of his argument. See Monterey Plaza Hotel Ltd. P'ship v. Local 483 of Hotel Employees & Rest. Employees Union, 215 F.3d 923, 926-27 (9th Cir.2000) (The purpose of the mail fraud and wire fraud proscriptions is to punish wrongful transfers of property from the victim to the wrongdoer, not to salve wounded feelings.); United States v. Walters, 997 F.2d 1219, 1227 (7th Cir.1993) (Both the `scheme or artifice to defraud' clause and the `obtaining money or property' clause of § 1343 contemplate a transfer of some kind. . . . A deprivation is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of mail fraud.); United States v. Baldinger, 838 F.2d 176, 180 (6th Cir.1988) (Section 1341 was intended by the Congress only to reach schemes that have as their goal the transfer of something of economic value to the defendant. (internal quotation marks omitted)). 14 We have previously addressed the meaning of scheme or artifice for obtaining money or property in the context of the mail fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1341, however, and we held that a defendant does not need to literally `obtain' money or property to violate the statute. Porcelli v. United States, 404 F.3d 157, 162 (2d Cir.2005). Porcelli was convicted of failing to collect state sales tax on gasoline sales and of filing fraudulent state sales tax returns, thereby depriving New York State of $5 million in tax revenue. Id. at 158. He sought to have his conviction overturned because he had not actually obtained any money or property from the State of New York during the course of his offense. Id. at 161. We rejected this argument, and in so doing, agreed with the Third Circuit that `a mail fraud violation may be sufficiently found where the defendant has merely deprived another of a property right.' Id. at 162 n. 5 (quoting United States v. Hedaithy, 392 F.3d 580, 602 n. 21 (3d Cir.2004)). For purposes of establishing this element under § 1343, therefore, it is sufficient that a defendant's scheme was intended to deprive another of property rights, even if the defendant did not physically obtain any money or property by taking it from the victim. See id. at 162. 15 Males' position here is slightly different from that asserted by the defendant in Porcelli. Males claims that he never intended to deprive Agent Keeley permanently of his money or property, but rather he only intended to obtain the use of it, i.e., freeze the account for a limited time so that Agent Keeley would not have access to it during that period. Males argues that the jury should have been charged that if it found the facts as he asserts them, then it could not convict him of wire fraud because his intended temporary use of the pension account did not amount to obtaining money or property. Even if Males were to be believed, what he posits is a distinction that makes no difference in our analysis. Under either scenario, whether temporarily, as here, or permanently, as in Porcelli, a victim is deprived of the ability to use his personal property. The requirement under § 1343 that the defendant devise a scheme or artifice for obtaining money or property is satisfied where a defendant fraudulently obtains the use of another person's money or property for a period of time, using it for his own personal profit, and depriving the owner of the ability to do so. Accordingly, the district court's instruction to the jury that some actual economic harm or injury to the victim must have been contemplated by [Males], but that the requirement of contemplated harm or injury does not require that [Males] intended to permanently de[p]rive the victim's money or property, was an accurate statement of the applicable law, and there was no error. 16 In addition, we note that each of the cases on which Males relies are distinguishable and, indeed, do not clearly support his argument. For example, in Walters, 997 F.2d 1219, the principal case on which Males relies, the Seventh Circuit reversed the mail fraud conviction of a defendant who signed contracts with college athletes in violation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regulations. See id. at 1222. The court concluded that no evidence established that the defendant knowingly caused the athletes' universities to mail false amateur status certifications to the NCAA, the crux of the alleged fraud. This case presents no such sufficiency concern. Further, the Walters court concluded that the record failed to establish a scheme for the defendant to obtain any money or property, directly or indirectly, from the victim universities. Their purported loss was scholarship money paid to athletes made ineligible by their contracts with the defendant. Meanwhile, the defendant hoped to profit, not from his control or use of the universities' property but from the professional contracts he expected the athletes to sign. After discussing certain antitrust implications of the claim, see id. at 1224-25, the Walters court concluded that, without a showing of the defendant's intent to obtain money or property from the universities or the NCAA, the necessary connection between his actions and his victims' property was too attenuated to establish mail fraud. Id. Significantly, the Seventh Circuit identified no such attenuation problem in United States v. Catalfo, 64 F.3d 1070 (7th Cir.1995), a case decided two years after Walters. There, the court held that using fraud or deceit to obtain access to a victim's bank account for the purpose of using it as collateral can constitute wire fraud even if the defendant never contemplates actually removing money from the account. Id. at 1077. As the district court correctly recognized, Catalfo is more analogous to Males' situation than Walters. 17 The other cases Males cites are similarly unpersuasive. In Monterey Plaza Hotel, 215 F.3d 923, the Ninth Circuit considered a case in which the defendant, a union, was convicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et seq., based on predicate acts of mail and wire fraud, for having waged an aggressive campaign of picketing and extortion against a hotel. See id. at 924. While the defendant's actions interfered with the victim's goodwill, the Ninth Circuit concluded that such actions did not constitute mail or wire fraud because the defendant had not sought actually to obtain the victim's property, i.e., the hotel's goodwill, through its scheme. Id. at 926. Similarly, in Baldinger, 838 F.2d 176, the defendant was convicted of mail fraud after conducting a campaign of mailing letters to his victim's customers falsely and maliciously stating that the victim was conducting polygraph examinations without a license. Id. at 177. Dealing with such intangible rights, the Sixth Circuit concluded that the defendant could only be convicted if the jury found that he had been motivated by personal gain. Id. at 180. Significantly, in neither Monterey Plaza nor Baldinger did the defendant seek to use their victim's property, as Males did. At most, these cases suggest that it may not be enough for defendants simply to interfere with their victims' property rights where those property rights are intangible.