Opinion ID: 298598
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Sufficiency of the Evidence Against Minnie Cramer

Text: 41 Minnie Cramer contends that, however the case may be with respect to her husband, there was insufficient evidence on which to predicate a verdict of guilty against her. The record does not support this claim. Agent Sager testified that during the course of one of the conferences, Minnie admitted that she was General Manager of the office, that she wrote checks, took care of the sales invoices, purchase invoices, and assisted the bookkeeper, that she worked on the records and compiled the figures for the income tax returns, and that she gave oral information (presumably concerning the returns) to Judge Thaler. Minnie's own testimony revealed that she had regularly typed the worksheets provided to her by the bookkeeper, which were used in preparation of the Cramer's Auto Parts Co. tax returns; that she retyped the top page of the worksheets, used in preparation of the 1962 and 1963 returns, on which the figure for the cost of purchases as reflected in the partnership records was lined out and a new figure inserted; and that she realized that the figure in regard to purchases for each of the two years was being changed. Although she denied that she recognized that the change was substantial or that she had any knowledge of its import, the jury was entitled to disbelieve this. Neither is the fact that the actual retyping of the adjusted purchase figures apparently occurred subsequent to the preparation of the returns conclusive that she was not fully aware of the changes when the returns were prepared. Both her own testimony and that of Agent Sager revealed abundant evidence of her intimate involvement with the affairs of Cramer's Auto Parts Co., its records, and, particularly the preparation of the underlying data for its tax returns, which clearly supports the jury's verdict that she knowingly participated in the making of false returns.