Court Opinion

ID: 9468604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:18:53.775664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:57.094439
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent because I do not believe that the mailings in this case furthered, in any way, the scheme to defraud. In reaching the opposite conclusion, the majority has completely misinterpreted Ohrynowicz v. United States, 542 F.2d 715 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1027, 97 S.Ct. 650, 50 L.Ed.2d 630 (1976), and has failed to distinguish United States v. Maze, 414 U.S. 395, 94 S.Ct. 645, 38 L.Ed.2d 603 (1974), on anything but a superficial basis.
The majority has interpreted Ohrynowicz to hold that where a mailing is a “normal concomitant of a transaction that was essential to the fraudulent scheme, [the mailing] was made for the purpose of executing that scheme.” Maj. op. at 163. Ohrynowicz does not stand for the proposition that every mailing which is a normal concomitant of an essential transaction provides the requisite jurisdictional basis for a mail fraud conviction. Any other interpretation is inconsistent with Maze v. United States, 414 U.S. 395, 94 S.Ct. 645, 38 L.Ed.2d 603 (1974). In Maze, the defendant stole a credit card and used it to charge food and lodging at several motels. The invoices mailed from the motels to the bank which issued the credit card were certainly a normal concomitant of the credit card transaction, yet the Supreme Court affirmed the acquittal of the defendants on the mail fraud charge because these mailings did not further the scheme. Thus determining that a mailing is a normal concomitant of an essential transaction is only the beginning of the inquiry. I agree that the mailings in this appeal are a normal concomitant of the retail sale of the car. Nevertheless, they did not further the scheme. They did not affect the price paid for the car, conceal the alteration of the odometer, cause any benefits to flow to Galloway, or cause any further harm to the retail purchasers of the car.
In Ohrynowicz and United States v. Clark (also cited by the majority), this court found the mailings to be “normal concomitants,” but was also careful to point out how the mailings furthered the scheme. In the instant case, the majority has concluded that the mailings were “more than normal concomitants” without establishing the factual basis for its conclusion.1 According to the majority, the retail sale was an essential transaction, the transfer of title was necessary to complete the retail sale and the mailing was a means of executing the transfer to title. It must be remembered that Galloway had nothing to do with the cars after he delivered them to the Auction. Thus, these mailings were only a convenient means of effecting a transaction to which Galloway was not a party.2 The connection *167between Galloway and the mailings is too attenuated to fall within the ambit of the mail fraud statute.3 A review of Maze and other cases supports this conclusion.
The majority has narrowed the holding in Maze to one sentence: there is no mail fraud liability where the mailings increased the probability that the fraudulent scheme would be detected. Maze does not stand for this proposition. Maze said that the mailings involved did not further a scheme to defraud in a specific fact situation. The fact that the mailings increased the likelihood of detection was only evidence that they did not further the scheme; it was not the crux of the holding. Any other conclusion ignores the fact that many mailings may both further the scheme and increase the likelihood of detection.4 Given this, it must be determined whether the facts in Maze are analogous to the facts in this appeal. I believe that they are. In both cases, the transactions from which the mailings arose were essential to the completion of the scheme. In both cases, the mailings were a normal concomitant of the essential transaction. In Maze, the mailings were directed to the end of adjusting accounts among the victims of the defendant’s scheme. In this appeal, the mailings were used to bring about the transfer of title between the victims of Galloway’s scheme. In Maze, the scheme did not depend on who bore the loss; here, the success of the scheme did not depend on how the transfer of title was completed. In Maze, whomever ended up with the invoice bore the loss. In this case, whomever ends up with title bears the loss. I fail to see any valid distinction between the facts in this case and in Maze. Despite all these similarities, the majority focuses on the one difference between the two cases and dismisses Maze as precedent. As pointed out above, this solitary distinction was not essential to the holding in Maze.
Kann v. United States, 323 U.S. 88, 65 S.Ct. 148, 89 L.Ed. 88 (1944), is also analogous. In Kann, corporate officers and directors were accused of diverting profits from their own corporation to a dummy corporation. As part of the scheme, the defendants obtained checks payable to them which were cashed or deposited at a bank and then mailed for collection to the drawee bank. The Supreme Court held that the fraud was completed at the point at which defendant cashed the checks:
The scheme in each case had reached fruition. The persons intended to receive the money had received it irrevocably. It was immaterial to them, or to any consummation of the scheme, how the bank *168which paid or credited the check would collect from the drawee bank. It cannot be said that the mailings in question were for the purpose of executing the scheme, as the statute requires. 323 U.S., at 94, 65 S.Ct. at 151.
As in Kami, Galloway had irrevocably received the money from the fraud. It was immaterial to him how the title to the car was transferred from the dealer to the consumer.
I also find the Parr v. United States, 363 U.S. 370, 80 S.Ct. 1171, 4 L.Ed.2d 1277 (1960), line of cases helpful in determining whether the mailings in this case are sufficiently related to the fraudulent scheme. (Although the majority touches on Parr, it has ignored Parr’s progeny, United States v. Tarnopol, 561 F.2d 466 (3d Cir. 1977).) In Parr, the Supreme Court held that intrinsically innocent routine mailings required by law did not further a scheme even when they occurred during the course of the scheme. In United States v. Tarnopol, 561 F.2d 466 (3d Cir. 1977), the Third Circuit reasoning from Parr decided that there is no
valid distinction to be drawn between those routine mailings which are required by law and those routine mailings, themselves intrinsically innocent, which are regularly employed to carry out a necessary or convenient procedure of a legitimate business enterprise. In either case the mailings themselves are not sufficiently closely related to the fraudulent scheme to support a mail fraud prosecution.
561 F.2d at 472. The mailings in this appeal fall within the parameters of this reasoning. ' The transfer of the automobile titles through the post office was a routine mailing performed by Wisconsin dealers as a service to their customers. The dealers are legitimate business enterprises and the mailings were intrinsically innocent and used to carry out a convenient procedure of the dealership.5
The majority has also advanced the argument that the mailings in issue furthered the scheme because successful title transfer helped ensure Galloway’s good will among Wisconsin dealers thus facilitating his ability to sell more cars at the Chicago Auction. The mailings, however, did no more to ensure Galloway’s access to the Chicago Auction than the mailings in Kann, supra, did to ensure the defendants’ access to bank services or the mailings in Maze, supra, did to further the defendant’s access to the motel market.6
At this point I find it necessary to distinguish United States v. Shryock, 537 F.2d 207 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1100, 97 S.Ct. 1123, 51 L.Ed.2d 549 (1976). Shryock also involved a scheme to roll back odometers but in that case, the roll back and the mailings were caused by a retail dealer. The mailings contained a falsified statement of the odometer reading. The Shryock mailings thus furthered the scheme by helping to cover up the true odometer reading. In the instant case, the mailings *169did not contain an odometer reading and they involved a transaction to which Galloway was not a party. In applying Shryoek, the majority has failed to recognize that where a defendant is not involved in a transaction, a mailing which results from that transaction is more remote from the defendant than if he was involved in the transaction.
In conclusion, I believe the mailings were not “sufficiently closely related to respondent’s scheme to bring his conduct within the statute.” United States v. Maze, supra, 414 U.S. at 399, 94 S.Ct. at 648. The mailings did not conceal the fraud, produce profit for Galloway or contribute to the consumer’s harm. The mailings resulted from a transaction to which Galloway was not a party and they were routine business mailings the purposes of which were immaterial to Galloway.
For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. The majority claims that the mailings were an “integral part” of an essential transaction. Given that the retail sale was an essential transaction, it does not follow that the mailing was an integral part of that transaction. The transfer of title may be an integral part of a retail transaction but this occurs at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The mailing was just a convenient procedure for moving the documents from the dealer to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The mailing itself did not produce the transfer of title. It was simply a normal concomitant of the retail sale.

. Where the mailings in a mail fraud scheme arise from a transaction in which the party perpetrating the fraud does not participate, I believe that the courts should be very careful to *167clearly establish the connection between the mailing and the defendant. See United States v. Lea, 618 F.2d 426, 432 (7th Cir. 1980) (Cudahy, J., dissenting).

. If the cars had been sold from one dealer to another before being sold to a retail customer, the mailing would have been even further removed from Galloway, as the Department of Motor Vehicles does not register transfers of title between dealers. I do not believe that the majority would have any trouble concluding that the mailing in this hypothetical case would be too attenuated to provide the basis for a mail fraud conviction. Unless the majority is prepared to agree that both fact situations (the hypothetical and the instant case) fall within the reach of the statute, we have a situation where the defendant’s involvement is identical in both cases and yet one is mail fraud, the other is not.
This hypothetical is by no means improbable. In fact, of the thirteen cars with rolled-back odometers, one was sold at the Chicago Auction to a dealer who subsequently sold it to a third dealer. Galloway was not convicted for mail fraud with respect to this automobile. (Only six of the thirteen transactions were included in the indictment.)
Also, if the dealers had sold the cars to out of state consumers, no mailing would have occurred. Where a mail fraud conviction hangs so precariously on the actions of a nondefendant, I believe the courts should view this as evidence of the attenuation between the mailing and the defendant.

. This is exactly what happened in Ohrynowicz. 542 F.2d at 718. The mailings increased the likelihood of detection but also helped to temporarily conceal the illegal nature of the scheme. The court concluded that these mailings furthered the scheme, after a discussion of Maze. Thus a finding that a mailing increases the possibility of detection is only a factor to be weighed with all the other facts; it is not determinative of whether Maze applies in a given case.

. The majority has dismissed the routine business mailing argument claiming that the mailings in United States v. Shryock, 537 F.2d 207 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1100, 97 S.Ct. 1123, 51 L.Ed.2d 549 (1976), were necessitated by law but were still within the purview of the mail fraud statute. This is patently wrong. The mailings in Shryock were not necessitated by law; the law only required that a form containing an odometer statement accompany the application for transfer of title. The law did not specify how the form was to be delivered. The correct case for determining the legal impact of a mailing of this type is United States v. Tarnopol, 561 F.2d 466 (3d Cir. 1977).

. The contention that title transfer is necessary to ensure Galloway’s access to the Chicago Auction ignores the realities of this market, and Galloway’s interaction in it. There are 4,800 dealer-buyers registered at the Auction and during the eighteen months pertinent to the indictment, Galloway sold 756 cars at the Auction. If title were to fail on one of Galloway’s cars, it is unreasonable to conclude that 4,800 dealer-buyers would blacklist all his cars. The majority’s conclusion that Galloway relied on Wisconsin dealers to return to the Auction to purchase more of his cars is refuted by these facts. Galloway did not know who would buy his cars. How could he rely on them to return to the Auction? Further, the evidence also is clear that Galloway sold used cars at other auctions throughout the United States.