United States v. Wombold, No. 18-6102 (6th Cir. 2020)
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Pilot Flying J, headquartered in Knoxville, operates hundreds of truck stops nationwide and sells billions of gallons of diesel fuel annually to trucking companies. Employees in Pilot’s direct-sales division falsely promised discounted fuel prices, and then secretly shorted the customers through deceptive invoicing and rebate techniques. Several pled guilty.
The Sixth Circuit reversed conspiracy to commit wire fraud (18 U.S.C. 1343) and mail fraud (section 1341) convictions of three defendants. The district court had allowed the government to play audio recordings in which one defendant, Pilot's President, is heard using deeply offensive racist and misogynistic language, reasoning that if the defendant was reckless enough to use language that could risk public outrage against the company, he was a “bad businessman,” and as a bad businessman, he was also reckless enough to commit fraud. “This is vintage bad character evidence—and precisely the type of reasoning the Federal Rules of Evidence forbid.” None of the Rules of Evidence support the recordings’ admissibility and, even if somehow otherwise admissible, the recordings are a “textbook violation” of Rule 403, because the risk of unfair prejudice eviscerates any purported probative value.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on October 29, 2020.
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