Shaw v. United States
Shaw v. United States
Opinion
A federal statute makes it a crime "knowingly [to] execut[e] a scheme ... to defraud a financial institution,"
I
The relevant criminal statute makes it a crime:
"knowingly [to] execut[e] a scheme ...
"(1) to defraud a financial institution; or
"(2) to obtain any of the moneys, funds, credits, assets, securities, or *466 other property owned by, or under the custody or control of, a financial institution, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises." § 1344.
Shaw obtained the identifying numbers of a Bank of America account belonging to a bank customer, Stanley Hsu. Shaw used those numbers (and other related information) to transfer funds from Hsu's account to other accounts at other institutions from which Shaw could obtain (and eventually did obtain) Hsu's funds. Shaw was convicted of violating the first clause of the statute, namely, the prohibition against "defraud[ing] a financial institution." The Ninth Circuit affirmed his conviction.
II
Shaw makes several related arguments in favor of his basic claim, namely, that the statute does not cover schemes to deprive a bank of customer deposits. First, he says that subsection (1) requires "an intent to wrong a victim bank [a 'financial institution'] in its property rights ...." Brief for Petitioner 23. He adds that the property he took, money in Hsu's bank account, belonged to Hsu, the bank's customer, and that Hsu is not a "financial institution." Id., at 25, 45. Hence Shaw's was a scheme "designed" to obtain only "a bank customer's property," not "a bank's own property." Id., at 24-25.
The basic flaw in this argument lies in the fact that the bank, too, had property rights in Hsu's bank account. When a customer deposits funds, the bank ordinarily becomes the owner of the funds and consequently has the right to use the funds as a source of loans that help the bank earn profits (though the customer retains the right, for example, to withdraw funds). 5A Michie, Banks and Banking, ch. 9, § 1, pp. 1-7 (2014) (Michie);
id.,
§ 4b, at 54-58;
id.,
§ 38, at 162;
Phoenix Bank v. Risley,
Hence, for purposes of the bank fraud statute, a scheme fraudulently to obtain funds from a bank depositor's account normally is also a scheme fraudulently to obtain property from a "financial institution," at least where, as here, the defendant knew that the bank held the deposits, the funds obtained came from the deposit account, and the defendant misled the bank in order to obtain those funds.
Second, Shaw says he did not intend to cause the bank financial harm. Indeed, the parties appear to agree that, due to standard banking practices in place at the time of the fraud, no bank involved in the scheme ultimately suffered any
*467
monetary loss. Brief for Petitioner 4; Brief for United States 4, 27-28. But the statute, while insisting upon "a scheme to defraud," demands neither a showing of ultimate financial loss nor a showing of intent to cause financial loss. Many years ago Judge Learned Hand pointed out that "[a] man is none the less cheated out of his property, when he is induced to part with it by fraud," even if "he gets a quid pro quo of equal value."
United States v. Rowe,
It is consequently not surprising that, when interpreting the analogous mail fraud statute, we have held it "sufficient" that the victim (here, the bank) be "deprived of its right" to use of the property, even if it ultimately did not suffer unreimbursed loss.
Carpenter v. United States,
Third, Shaw appears to argue that, whatever the true state of property law, he did not
know
that the bank had a property interest in Hsu's account; hence he could not have intended to cheat the bank of its property. Shaw did know, however, that the bank possessed Hsu's account. He did make false statements to the bank. He did correctly believe that those false statements would lead the bank to release from that account funds that ultimately and wrongfully ended up in Shaw's pocket. And the bank did in fact possess a property interest in the account. These facts are sufficient to show that Shaw knew he was entering into a scheme to defraud the bank even if he was not aware of the niceties of bank-related property law. To require more,
i.e.,
to require actual knowledge of those bank-related property-law niceties, would free (or convict) equally culpable defendants depending upon their property-law expertise-an arbitrary result. We have found no case from this Court requiring legal knowledge of the kind Shaw suggests he lacked. But we have found cases in roughly similar fraud-related contexts where this Court has asked only whether the targeted property was in fact property in the hands of the victim, not whether the defendant knew that the law would characterize the items at issue as "property." See
Pasquantino v. United States,
*468
Carpenter,
Fourth, Shaw argues that the bank fraud statute requires the Government to prove more than his simple
knowledge
that he would likely harm the bank's property interest; in his view, the Government must prove that such was his
purpose.
See
Voisine v. United States,
579 U.S. ----, ----,
But the statute itself makes criminal the "
knowin[g]
execut[ion of] a scheme ... to defraud." To hold that something other than knowledge is required would assume that Congress intended to distinguish, in respect to states of mind, between (1) the fraudulent scheme, and (2) its fraudulent elements. Why would Congress wish to do so? Shaw refers us to a number of cases involving fraud against the Government and points to language in those cases suggesting that the relevant statutes required that the defendant's purpose be to harm the statutorily protected target and not a third party. Brief for Petitioner 25-29. But in two of those cases, the fraudulent statement was made not to the Government but to the third party-a circumstance not present here. See
Allison Engine Co. v. United States ex rel. Sanders,
Fifth, Shaw, reading the bank fraud statute as a whole, urges us to compare subsection (1) with subsection (2). Supra, at 465. Subsection (2), he points out, makes criminal the use of "false or fraudulent pretenses" to obtain "property ... under the custody or control of" a bank. And in his view that fact means that we should read subsection (1) not to apply to those circumstances. That is to say, given the language of subsection (2), efforts such as his effort fraudulently to obtain money deposited in a bank account should not fall within the scope of the subsection (1) phrase "scheme ... to defraud a financial institution." Brief for Petitioner 30-33.
As we read the two subsections, however, they do not demand that interpretation. The two subsections overlap substantially but not completely. Subsection (2) makes criminal the use of a scheme
"to obtain any of the moneys, funds, credits, assets, securities, or other property *469 owned by, or under the custody or control of, a financial institution, by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises."
This language covers much that subsection (1) also covers, for example, making a false representation to a bank in order to obtain property belonging to that bank. See
Loughrin v. United States,
573 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, n. 4,
Finally, Shaw asks us to apply the rule of lenity. Brief for Petitioner 40-41. We have said that the rule applies if "at the end of the process of construing what Congress has expressed,"
Callanan v. United States,
III
Shaw further argues that the instructions the District Court gave the jury were erroneous. He points out that the District Court told the jury that the
"phrase 'scheme to defraud' means any deliberate plan of action or course of conduct by which someone intends to deceive, cheat, or deprive a financial institution of something of value." App. 18 (emphasis added).
This instruction, Shaw says, could be understood as permitting the jury to find him guilty if it found no more than that his scheme was one to deceive the bank but not to " deprive " the bank of anything of value. Brief for Petitioner 22-23. The parties agree, as do we, that the scheme must be one to deceive the bank and deprive it of something of value.
For reasons previously pointed out, we have held that a plan to deprive a bank of money in a customer's deposit account is a plan to deprive the bank of "something of value" within the meaning of the bank fraud statute. The parties dispute whether the jury instruction is nonetheless *470 ambiguous or otherwise improper. We leave to the Ninth Circuit to determine whether that question was fairly presented to that court and, if so, whether the instruction is lawful, and, if not, whether any error was harmless in this case.
For these reasons, the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Lawrence Eugene SHAW, Petitioner v. UNITED STATES.
- Cited By
- 77 cases
- Status
- Published