United States v. Eglash, No. 14-30132 (9th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseDefendant appealed his conviction for mail fraud, arguing that there was insufficient evidence on Counts 4 and 6 to show that the underlying mailings furthered his fraudulent scheme. Count 4 arises from the notice of disability award that SSA mailed to defendant's girlfriend. The court affirmed as to this count, concluding that the notice of disability award marked the last step before defendant's girlfriend would receive disability benefit payments, the goal of her fraudulent plan with defendant. The mailing was a contemplated, necessary step in its respective scheme. Count 6 pertains to the application summary that SSA mailed to defendant in January 2012. The court reversed as to this count because the underlying mailing was not part of the execution of the scheme as conceived by the perpetrator at the time, and because it did nothing to further the scheme. The court remanded for further proceedings.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s judgment in a case in which the defendant claimed that the evidence presented to support two mail fraud counts was insufficient to show that the underlying mailings furthered his fraudulent scheme to receive disability benefits. The panel affirmed the district court’s judgment on Count 4, which arose out of a notice of disability award mailed by the Social Security Administration, because the notice— which marked the last step before the defendant’s girlfriend would receive disability benefit payments, the goal of her fraudulent plan with the defendant—was a contemplated, necessary step in the fraudulent scheme. The panel reversed the district court’s conviction on Count 6, which pertained to a disability application summary that the SSA mailed to the defendant, because the fraud the defendant envisioned was neither dependent upon nor furthered by the Government’s decision to transcribe, in summary form, the fraudulent statements he made when he talked to the SSA. The panel affirmed the defendant’s convictions on four other counts in a memorandum disposition. UNITED STATES V. EGLASH 3 Judge Kleinfeld concurred with regard to affirming the conviction on Count 4 as compelled by United States v. Brown, 771 F.3d 1149 (9th Cir. 2014). He wrote that this case should be reheard en banc to correct Brown’s mistaken interpretation of the mail fraud statute and Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (1989), because the SSA’s mailing of the notice of award to the defendant cannot be characterized as “part of the execution” of the defendant’s scheme. Judge Wallace concurred and dissented. He agreed with the majority that Brown controls with regard to Count 4, and wrote that it is sufficient for the mailing to be “incident to an essential part of the scheme.” He would affirm the conviction on Count 6. He wrote that it is enough that the scheme conceived of by the perpetrator include the mailing as part of its normal execution, and that the jury could have reasonably found that the SSA’s mailing of the application summary was incident to an essential part of the defendant’s scheme.
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