Court Opinion

ID: 9476019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:46:14.182733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:05.873024
License: Public Domain

JON O. NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Customers of the defendants paid them money to have a service rendered — the mailing of letters. In performing that service, the defendants defrauded the United States Postal Service by scheming to pay less than the proper amount of postage. No doubt many customers would not have wished to do business with the defendants had they known that the defendants were defrauding the Post Office in the course of performing the service the customers had purchased. And no doubt many customers would not wish to do business with the defendants if the defendants were defrauding any other person from whom the defendants obtained goods or services neces*102sary for conducting their business — the supplier of printed forms, the landlord, or the telephone company. But a customer’s regret at doing business with a company that defrauds one of its trade creditors does not transform fraud upon the creditor into fraud upon the customer.
The Government has simply indicted the defendants for defrauding the wrong party. An indictment for defrauding the Postal Service would have led to a conviction that would surely have been affirmed. However, the indictment for defrauding the customers has led to a conviction that must be reversed, for all of the reasons cogently explained in Judge Meskill’s opinion, in which I concur.