Opinion ID: 592148
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Evidence of Related Schemes

Text: 42 Finally, Lothian attacks the admission of evidence concerning First American Currency and Schoolhouse Coins, two other fraudulent schemes in which Goldberg and Thompson were involved. He contends that this evidence was irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial to him because it was never tied to BNGA and led the jury to infer fraudulent intent on his part solely by virtue of his association with people who had been involved in other fraudulent schemes. 43 Vickie Anderson-Rasi was a bookkeeper at First American Currency, where Thompson worked as a sales manager before joining BNGA. She testified that postal inspectors shut First American down in December 1985, raising concerns among the staff about the company's legitimacy. Michael Curren, a United States postal inspector, testified simply that he had taken part in an investigation of First American. 44 Wayne Pederson, who was a sales manager at Schoolhouse Coins, testified about Thompson's and Goldberg's purchase of that enterprise in the spring of 1986. Pederson testified that Schoolhouse Coins was a fraudulent telemarketing boilerroom selling numismatic coins and that he had pled guilty to fraud for his participation in the scheme. According to Pederson, he had not hidden the fraudulent nature of the enterprise from Thompson, and Thompson knew when he and Goldberg purchased Schoolhouse Coins that it was out of trust, that is, it had sold interests in coins that exceeded the amount of coins it had purchased on its customers' behalf. 45 Although we generally review the district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion, our review is for plain error when a proper objection has not been made at trial. United States v. Kessi, 868 F.2d 1097, 1107 (9th Cir.1989). At the beginning of the trial the district judge stated: An objection by one defendant is an objection by all. And the ruling is the same regarding all of them unless I say otherwise. Thompson objected to admission of the evidence concerning First American Currency; however, neither Lothian nor any of his co-defendants who had not participated at First American objected to Anderson-Rasi's testimony. Again, only Thompson objected to Curren's limited testimony that he was involved in a postal inspection of First American. Thompson's objections to the use of the First American evidence to show a common fraudulent scheme were sufficient to constitute objections by Lothian on the same ground. These general relevancy objections did not, however, constitute an objection that the evidence was not applicable to Lothian because he had not participated in First American's activities. That issue was never called to the district court's attention, and to the extent that Lothian now raises it we review for plain error. 46 A plain error is a highly prejudicial error affecting substantial rights. United States v. Bustillo, 789 F.2d 1364, 1367 (9th Cir.1986) (quoting United States v. Giese, 597 F.2d 1170, 1199 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 979, 100 S.Ct. 480, 62 L.Ed.2d 405 (1979)). Here, the additional testimony concerning First American did not affect Lothian's substantial rights. As indicated in our discussion above, there was an abundance of evidence linking Lothian with the fraudulent scheme at BNGA and showing his own fraudulent intent, and the addition of the First American testimony could not have affected his substantial rights. By the same token, even were there error in the admission of the testimony concerning the Schoolhouse Coins enterprise, it was at most harmless error, because it did not affect Lothian's substantial rights. See Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a) (harmless error is [a]ny error ... which does not affect substantial rights), and the facts set forth in the sections entitled BACKGROUND and Fraudulent Intent, supra, which overwhelming indicate Lothian's guilt.