Court Opinion

ID: 9498077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:07:36.154777+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:36.382474
License: Public Domain

MICHAEL, Circuit Judge,
concurring. in part and dissenting in part:
I agree with most of the majority’s opinion and therefore concur in parts II.A, II.B.l, and III. I respectfully dissent, however, from the majority’s determination in part II.B.2 that venue was proper in the Eastern District of Virginia for the two false claims counts. See ante at 528-33. Because no part of the conduct that would constitute a false claims offense occurred in the Eastern District of Virginia, venue for the two counts was not proper there.
Under the Sixth Amendment a defendant has the right to be tried in the district in which the crime was committed. U.S. Const, amend. VI. “When ... the statute defining the substantive offense does not indicate where Congress considered the place of committing the crime to be, the [place of the crime] must be determined from the nature of the crime alleged and the location of the act or acts constituting it.” United States v. Blecker, 657 F.2d 629, 632 (4th Cir.1981) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In assessing venue, “a court must initially identify the conduct constituting the offense (the nature of the crime) and then discern the location of the commission of the criminal acts.” United States v. Rodriguez-Moreno, 526 U.S. 275, 279, 119 S.Ct. 1239, 143 L.Ed.2d 388 (1999).
The false claims statute provides that any person who knowingly “makes or presents” a false claim to an “agency or department” of the United States is guilty of a crime. 18 U.S.C. § 287. Moreover, a person who “willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.” Id. § 2(b). The false claims statute thus prohibits not only the direct submission" of a false claim to a federal agency but also the submission of a false claim to an agency through the use of an intermediary or agent. See Blecker, 657 F.2d at 633-34.
*538The majority correctly recognizes (1) that the conduct constituting a § 287 offense is the presentation of a false claim to an agency and (2) that the venue issue here turns on whether the false claims were presented to an agency in the Eastern District of Virginia. See ante at 530-31. Ebersole submitted one allegedly false claim to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the Western District of Virginia and a second one to the Department of State in Washington, D.C. These agencies then forwarded the claims for processing to agency branch offices located in the Eastern District of Virginia. No one disputes that venue would have been proper in the district where Ebersole presented the claim to the particular agency, the Western District of Virginia for one and Washington, D.C., for the other. According to the majority, however, the false claims were again presented to the two agencies when the agencies forwarded the claims to their branch offices in the Eastern District of Virginia. The majority thus concludes that the offenses were also committed in the Eastern District of Virginia, making venue proper there as well. I respectfully disagree because the plain meaning of “present” forecloses a conclusion that the claims were again presented to the agencies when the agencies themselves transferred them to branch offices.
The word “present” means to “deliver formally for acceptance.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1793 (1993). This definition indicates that an item is presented only when a person or entity delivers it to a different person or entity. Thus, the conduct constituting the offense of presenting a false claim does not include an agency’s transfer of the claim to one of its branch offices because the branch office is part of the agency itself. Put another way, an agency cannot present, or deliver formally for acceptance, a false claim to itself. For this reason, FEMA’s and the Department of State’s transfers of Eber-sole’s claims to branch offices located in the Eastern District of Virginia were not presentations of false claims to the agencies. Accordingly, no conduct constituting the offense occurred in that district.
Our decision in United States v. Blecker does not help the majority. In that case we concluded that venue was proper (1) in the district where the defendants delivered the false claims to a private intermediary who, in turn, was to submit them to a government agency located in another district and (2) in the district where the private intermediary submitted the claims to the agency. Blecker, 657 F.2d at 632-33. According to the majority, Bleaker establishes “that Ebersole’s false claims could be ‘presented’ multiple times,” and “it is of no significance that the false claims [in Bleaker ] ... were presented directly to the targeted federal agency just once (by the intermediary), and that Ebersole’s false claims were presented directly to the agencies multiple times (as they passed the claims internally in the course of processing them for payment).” Ante at 531. Bleaker, however, is entirely different from Ebersole’s case because the defendants in Bleaker submitted the false claims to a private intermediary. When the private intermediary, in turn, submitted the claims on behalf of the defendants to the government agency, the intermediary’s act was part of the conduct constituting the offense, that is, the presentation of false claims to an agency. See 18 U.S.C. § 287. In contrast, when the agencies in the present case transferred Ebersole’s false claims to branch offices, the transfers were not conduct constituting the offense because an agency cannot present a claim to itself. Although Ebersole’s presentation of his claims may have triggered a process in which one branch of an agency trans*539ferred the claim to another branch, such intra-agency transfer is not criminal conduct covered under the false claims statute.
The majority’s decision in part II.B.2 is disquieting because it will allow the government to maneuver venue to its advantage in a false claims prosecution. After today, a defendant who submits a false claim in one district may be tried in any district where the claim might be routed by the agency during processing and payment. This is at odds with the principle that “the venue provisions of the Constitution are meant to act as safeguards, protecting the defendant from bias, disadvantage, and inconvenience in the adjudication of the charges against him.” Ante at 524.
The district court submitted the false claims venue question to Ebersole’s jury with the following instruction: “it is sufficient for venue purposes if the claim that allegedly was false passed through the Eastern District of Virginia before coming to the final office where it was paid.” Record at 1986. This instruction is directly contrary to the simple fact that an agency cannot present a false claim to itself under § 287. I would therefore vacate Eber-sole’s conviction on the two false claims counts and remand for the dismissal of these counts without prejudice.