Court Opinion

ID: 9487227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:11:23.230683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:09.586194
License: Public Domain

GORDON J. QUIST, District Judge,
dissenting.
I concur in all respects except one with the opinion of Judge Guy and the concurring opinion of Judge Nelson. My sole dissent goes to what is required to establish a “pattern” for purposes of RICO.
The Supreme Court spelled out what was required to establish a pattern for purposes of RICO in H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S. 229, 109 S.Ct. 2893, 106 L.Ed.2d 195 (1989). Surveying the legislative history, the Court said:
A pattern is not formed by “sporadic activity,” and a person cannot be subjected to the sanctions of title IX simply for committing two widely separated and isolated criminal offenses. Instead, the term “pattern” itself requires the showing of a relationship between the predicates and of the threat of continuing activity. It is this factor of continuity plus relationship which combines to produce a pattern.
Id. at 239, 109 S.Ct. at 2900 (emphasis in original) (internal quotations and citations omitted). The Court turned to 18 U.S.C. § 3575(e) for a definition of what is required to show that predicate acts were related: “[Cjriminal conduct forms a pattern if it embraces criminal acts that have the same or similar purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated events.” Id. at 240, 109 S.Ct. at 2901. Continuity can be show by either “a closed period of repeated conduct, or ... past conduct that by its nature projects into the future with a threat of repetition.” Id. at 241, 109 S.Ct. at 2902.
In attacking his RICO conviction, Bland-ford argues that the two predicate acts — the Hobbs Act conviction and the mail fraud — do not constitute a “pattern” sufficient to support a RICO conviction. Although Blandford argues that neither continuity nor relatedness were shown, the acts themselves and Blandford’s comfort with using his office for personal ends suggest a threat of repetition. I thus agree with the majority opinion on the issue of continuity. My only disagreement is on the issue of the relatedness of the two predicate acts.
In Vild v. Visconsi, 956 F.2d 560 (6th Cir.1992), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 99, 121 L.Ed.2d 59 (1992), this Court held that the pattern requirement was not satisfied in a RICO complaint involving Florida real estate because the two series of actions outlined in the complaint were not sufficiently related to each other. The first of the two involved a scheme to defraud plaintiff John Vild by allegedly inducing him to enter into a real estate marketing venture for a Florida resort club and then attempting to force him out of business. Id. at 563. *715The second scheme involved alleged illegal solicitations that certain defendants made to induce customers to purchase interests in the club. Id. The court held that the two schemes had very different purposes, disparate results, different victims, and different means of commission. It also held “[t]hat some of the same participants engaged in both lines of conduct does not alter our conclusion that the predicate acts in the two schemes are unrelated.” Id. at 568.
The dissent in Vild, like the majority in the case at bar, pointed out that the H.J. Inc. definition of relatedness used the disjunctive, which “indicates that the related requirement is met if the predicate acts are the same or similar in any of the enumerated ways.” 956 F.2d at 571. The dissent concluded that the two schemes were related because they had the same participants — some of the defendants were involved in both schemes. Id.
In this case, the majority holds that Bland-ford’s conviction under RICO is supported by a pattern in that both actions — accepting money for influencing legislation and converting campaign funds to personal use — are related in that they had as their purpose the use of public office for financial gain. The government charged Blandford with four predicate acts — the Hobbs Act violation, in which Blandford took money for himself, and three acts of mail fraud, all of which involved the use of campaign funds to award Bland-ford’s assistants. If the jury had based its RICO conviction on more than one of the acts of mail fraud, there would be no question that the acts were related.
The jury, however, determined that only the Hobbs Act violation and one of the mail fraud allegations had been proved by a preponderance of the evidence. These acts are widely separated in time. In addition, the means of commission, the victims, and the results are dissimilar. The purpose can be described as the same only if it is described on a very general level as the use of public office for personal benefit. It cannot even be described as the use of public office for financial gain in that the mail fraud act provided Blandford’s assistant, not himself, with financial gain. This general level of description is an insufficient basis for relatedness because almost every act of fraud or misuse of funds can be described as for this same general purpose — for personal benefit.
And I cannot conclude that there should be a different analysis because Mr. Blandford used a public office, as distinguished from, for example, a private company, to commit his criminal acts. This is not to say that misuse of public office can never provide the basis for finding criminal acts to be related. In this particular case, Blandford’s post-election use of excess campaign funds to award an assistant did not involve misuse of the power of his office. The fact that Blandford used campaign funds instead of some other fund entrusted to him was incidental to the act. If, in addition to the Hobbs Act conviction, he had committed another act in which misuse of public power or position is an essential component, like election fraud or a second Hobbs Act violation, I would consider the acts related.
The question, it seems to me, is whether the criminal acts are related as distinguished from whether the vehicle for achieving those acts is the same. If all that is required is the same vehicle for the wrongful acts, i.e. the same defendants and a very general description of purpose, RICO’s criminal charges and treble damages can be brought into play against any individual or company that engages in two entirely different fraudulent schemes. See Menasco, Inc. v. Wasserman, 886 F.2d 681, 685 (4th Cir.1989) (“If the pattern requirement has any force whatsoever, it is to prevent this type of ordinary commercial fraud from being transformed into a federal RICO claim”). This result would disregard the H.J. Inc. holding that “[a] pattern is not formed by ‘sporadic activity,’ and a person cannot be subjected to the sanctions of title IX simply for committing two widely separated and isolated criminal offenses.” 492 U.S. at 239, 109 S.Ct. at 2900. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.