PARR ET AL. v. UNITED STATES.
No. 391
Supreme Court of the United States
Decided June 13, 1960.
Argued April 28, 1960.
363 U.S. 370
Assistant Attorney General Wilkey argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Rankin, Edgar O. Bottler, Beatrice Rosenberg and Eugene L. Grimm.
MR. JUSTICE WHITTAKER delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners, nine individuals and two state banking corporations,1 were indicted in 20 counts in the United
States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, for mail fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. The first 19 counts charged that petitioners devised, prior to September 1, 1949, and continued to February 20, 1954, a scheme to defraud the Benavides Independent School District (“District“) of Duval County, Texas, the State of Texas, and the taxpayers of each, and that they used the mails for the purpose of executing the scheme, in violation of
After their various motions, including one challenging venue and asking transfer of the action to the Corpus Christi Division of the court, and one for a bill of particulars, were denied, petitioners entered pleas of “not guilty” and in due course the case was put to trial before a jury. The jury returned verdicts finding petitioners
Petitioners’ principal contentions here are: (1) that, although the indictment charged and the evidence tended to show that petitioners devised and practiced a scheme to defraud the District by the local or state crimes of misappropriating and embezzling its money and property, neither the indictment nor the proofs support the judgments, because the indictment did not charge, and the proofs did not show, any use of the mails “for the purpose
We turn first to the indictment. Summarized as briefly as fair statement permits, the first count alleged that the District is a public corporation organized under the laws of Texas to acquire and hold the facilities necessary for, and to operate, the public schools within the District,5 and, for those purposes, to assess and collect taxes; that the laws of Texas vest exclusive control of the property and management of the affairs of the District in its Board of Trustees, consisting of seven members; that prior to September 1, 1949, petitioners devised, and continued to February 20, 1954, a scheme to defraud the District, the State of Texas, and the taxpayers of each, and to obtain their money and property for themselves and their relatives.
It then alleged that, as part of the scheme, petitioners would falsely represent that district checks were issued, and its funds disbursed, only to persons and concerns for services rendered and materials furnished to the District, and that its Annual Reports to the State Commissioner of Education were correct.
It next alleged that, as a further part of the scheme, seven of the petitioners would establish and maintain
It then alleged that it was a further part of the scheme that petitioners would send or cause to be sent letters, tax statements, checks in payment of taxes, and receipted tax statements, through the United States mails; that the checks and moneys received by the District from taxpayers and others would be deposited to the credit of the District in the authorized depository bank, against which petitioners would issue district checks payable to fictitious persons, and to existing persons, without consideration (falsifying the District‘s records to show that such checks were issued in payment for services or materials), and would cash such checks, upon forged endorsements or without endorsements of the payees, at the depository bank and convert the proceeds; that they would open accounts and deposit checks received in payment of taxes in unauthorized banks, and that petitioner Chapa would withdraw and convert the funds; that they would convert and cash checks received by the District in payment of taxes and keep the proceeds; that they would obtain merchandise for themselves on the credit and at the expense of the District; that they would prepare, and the Board of Trustees would approve, false Annual Reports of the District and mail them to the State Commissioner of
The last paragraph of the count—the only paragraph purporting to charge an offense—charged that petitioners on September 29, 1952, for the purpose of executing the scheme, caused to be taken from the post office, in the Houston Division of the court, a letter addressed to Humble Oil & Refining Company, Houston, Texas.9
Each of Counts 2 through 19 adopted by reference all allegations of the first count, except those contained in the last paragraph of that count which charged a specific offense against petitioners, and then proceeded to allege that on a stated date the petitioners, for the purpose of executing the scheme, “caused” a particular letter, tax statement, check, tax receipt or invoice to be placed in or taken from an authorized depository for United States mail in the Houston Division of the court.10 Doubtless
The twentieth count charged that throughout the relevant period petitioners feloniously conspired and agreed among themselves and with others to commit “the offenses . . . which are fully described and set out in the first count of this indictment,” and that, to effect the object of the conspiracy, petitioners committed specified overt acts.12
We now look to the evidence. Condensed to pith, the 6,000 pages of evidence disclose that the District, acting through its Board of Trustees of seven members, operated the public schools in the towns of Benavides and Freer, each having slightly more than 1,000 pupils. From time to time the Board met to appoint (a) an assessor-collector, (b) an independent firm of engineers and accountants to assist the assessor-collector in determining the ownership and valuation of property—particularly mineral lands and complex fractional interests therein—in the District, (c) a Board of Equalization, and (d) a depository of the District‘s funds, and also met (e) to consider and propose to the electorate the authorization and sale of bonds in 1949 ($265,000) and in 1950 ($362,500) to finance the construction of new school facilities.
In actual operations the engineering-accounting firm would annually prepare and submit to the assessor-collector a list showing the ownership and its appraisal of the value of the various properties and mineral interests in the District, from which, after the Board of Equalization had completed its work thereon (in June and July), the assessor-collector would prepare the tax rolls for the current year and therefrom prepare and send out the tax statements by mail, and on receipt of checks in payment of taxes (the great majority of which were received in the mails) would—with exceptions later noted—deposit them to the credit of the District in the depository bank, and then mail receipts to the taxpayers.
Three members of the Board resided in Freer, and the other four resided in Benavides. Aside from the meet-
Petitioners Saenz, Garza and Garcia were three of the four Benavides members of the Board. Petitioners Oscar Carrillo, Sr., and O. P. Carrillo were, respectively, the secretary of and the attorney for the Board. Petitioner Chapa was the assessor-collector. Petitioner Parr was the president and principal stockholder of petitioner Texas State Bank of Alice—the authorized depository of the District‘s funds—and of petitioner San Diego State Bank, and there was evidence that, although having no official connection with the District, he practically dominated and controlled its affairs, kept its books and records in his office, outside the District, until July 1951, and countersigned all its checks after June 1950. Petitioner Donald was the cashier and administrative manager of the Texas
There was evidence that throughout the relevant period the District‘s funds, in large amounts, were misappropriated, converted, embezzled and stolen by petitioners. It tended to show that four devices were used for such purposes:
(1) At least once each month numerous district checks were issued against both its building and maintenance accounts in the depository bank payable to fictitious persons and were presented in bundles, totaling from $3,000 to $12,000, to the depository bank and, under the supervision of petitioner Donald, were cashed by it, without endorsements, and the currency was placed and sealed in an envelope and handed to the presenting person for delivery to petitioner Parr. The evidence tended to show that no less than $120,000 of the District‘s funds were misappropriated in this way. However, no one of these acts is charged as an offense by the indictment.
(2) At least once each month large numbers of district checks were issued to petitioners, other than Donald and the two banks, often in assumed names or in the names of members of their families, purporting to be in payment for services rendered or materials furnished to the District but which were not rendered or furnished, which checks were presented to the depository bank and, under the supervision of petitioner Donald, were cashed by it, often without or upon forged endorsements.14 The
evidence tended to show that no less than $65,000 of the District‘s funds were misappropriated in this way. But again no one of these acts is charged as an offense by the indictment.
(3) Petitioner Chapa converted district checks received by mail in payment of taxes, cashed the same—some at a local bank and some at the depository bank—upon unauthorized endorsements, and misappropriated the proceeds.15
(4) Petitioners Oscar Carrillo, Sr., and Garza obtained gasoline and oil for themselves upon the credit card and at the expense of the District.16 Use of the mails by “causing” the oil company to place its invoices for these goods in the mails and to take the District‘s check in payment from the mails in Houston, constitutes the basis of Counts 17, 18 and 19 of the indictment.17
The letters, checks and invoices which Counts 1 through 19 of the indictment charge were “caused” by petitioners to be placed in or taken from the mails in Houston, were all offered and received in evidence. Having fully stated the substance of them in notes 9 and 10, we do not repeat it here. The evidence also tended to prove the overt acts alleged in the twentieth count of the indictment.18
“Applying the law to the first 19 counts of the indictment, if you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant George B. Parr and the other defendants charged and triable in Count One of the indictment considering each separately, did the things that it is alleged that he did do in the first count of the indictment, and at the time that it occurred there existed a scheme to defraud, and that, as a result of such scheme, the mails were used necessarily or incidentally to the carrying out of that scheme, and, as a result thereof, . . . he did cause the defrauding or obtaining of property by false pretenses and representations in any of the particulars set forth therein . . . and that he used the United States Mails as set forth in Count One, . . . then it becomes your duty . . . to find such defendant or defendants guilty as charged in the first count of the indictment and so find by your verdict. . . . The same reasoning and instructions apply to each of the first nineteen counts of the indictment and as to each of the defendants charged and triable in each of the first nineteen counts of the indictment.”
“Therefore, with reference to the 20th count, if you believe as to any of the alleged conspirators that that person, together with at least one other, did the things charged against him in such count . . . to effect the objects of the alleged conspiracy, and thereafter there was done one or more of the overt acts set forth in such count . . . then it becomes your duty under the law as to such defendant or defendants that you so believe as to such 20th count were guilty, to so say by your verdict . . . .”19
Specifically, petitioners’ position is that the School Board was required by law to assess and collect taxes for the acquisition of facilities for, and to maintain and operate, the District‘s schools; that the taxes, assessed in obedience to that duty and for those purposes, were not charged in the indictment or shown by the evidence to have been in any way illegal, and must therefore be assumed to have been entirely lawful; that to perform its duty to assess and collect such taxes, the Board was both legally authorized and compelled to cause the mailing of the letters and their enclosures (tax statements, checks and receipts) complained of in the indictment, and hence those mailings may not be said to have been “for the purpose of executing such scheme,” in violation of
The Government, on the other hand, contends, first, that it was not necessary to charge or prove that the taxes were unlawful, for it is its view that once the scheme to
After asserting complete novelty of the Government‘s position and that no reported case supports it, counsel for petitioners point to what they think would be the “explosively expanded” and incongruous results from adoption of the Government‘s theory, e. g., making federal mail fraud cases out of the conduct of a doctor‘s secretary or a business concern‘s billing clerk or cashier in mailing out, in the course of duty, the employer‘s lawful statements with the design, eventually executed, of misappropriating part of the receipts—the aptness of which supposed analogies, happily, we are not called on to determine. But petitioners’ counsel concede that if such secretary, clerk or cashier—and similarly a member of a School Board—improperly “pads” or increases the amounts of the statements and causes them to be mailed to bring in a fund to be looted, such mailings, not being those of the employer (or School Board), would not be duty bound or legally compelled and would constitute an essential step “for the purpose of executing [a] scheme” to defraud, in violation of
It is clear and undisputed that the School Board was under an express constitutional mandate to levy and collect taxes for the acquisition of facilities for, and to maintain and operate, the schools of the District, Constitution of Texas, Art. 7, § 3,21 and was required by statute to issue statements for such taxes and to deliver receipts upon payment.22
The Texas laws leave to the discretion of such school boards the valuation of properties and the fixing of the tax rate, within a prescribed limit, in the making of their assessments,23 and their determinations, made within the prescribed limit as here, are not judicially reviewable, Madeley v. Trustees of Conroe Ind. School Dist., 130 S. W. 2d 929, 934 (Tex. Civ. App.), except enforcement may be enjoined for fraud.24 But the question whether the amount of such an assessment might be collaterally attacked, even for fraud, in a federal mail fraud case is not presented here, for after a most careful examination we are compelled to say that the indictment did not expressly or impliedly charge, and there was no evidence tending to show, that the taxes assessed were excessive, “padded” or in any way illegal. Nor did the court submit any such issue to the jury. Indeed, the court refused a charge proffered by counsel for petitioners
The theory that it was impliedly charged and shown that the taxes were illegal in that they were assessed, collected and accumulated in excess of the District‘s needs in order to provide a fund for misappropriation, was first injected into the case by the Court of Appeals. That court rested its judgment largely upon its conclusion that the assessments were designed to bring in not only “enough money . . . to provide for the legitimate operation of the schools [but also] enough additional . . . to provide the funds to be looted.” 265 F. 2d, at 897. We think that theory and conclusion is not supported by the record. As stated, no such fact or theory was charged in the indictment, shown by the evidence or submitted to the jury, and moreover the Government negatived any such possible implication by taking the position at the trial that the assessed taxes were needed for new school facilities and improvements and that the misappropriations deprived the District of those needed things and left it “two and one-half years in debt.”
Nor does the Government question that the Board, to collect the District‘s taxes (largely from nonresident property owners), was required by the state law to use the mails. Indeed, it took the position at the trial, and argued to the jury, that the Board could not “collect these taxes
The crucial question, respecting Counts 1 through 16 of the indictment, then comes down to whether the legally compelled mailings of the lawful—or, more properly, what are not charged or shown to have been unlawful—letters, tax statements, checks and receipts, complained of in those counts, properly may be said to have been for the purpose of executing a scheme to defraud because those legally compelled to cause and causing those mailings planned to steal an indefinite part of the receipts.
The fact that a scheme may violate state laws does not exclude it from the proscriptions of the federal mail fraud statute, for Congress “may forbid any . . . [mailings] . . . in furtherance of a scheme that it regards as contrary to public policy, whether it can forbid the scheme or not.” Badders v. United States, 240 U. S. 391, 393. In exercise of that power, Congress enacted
The Government, with the support of the cases, soundly argues that immunization from the ban of the statute is not effected by the fact that those causing the mailings were public officials26 or by the fact that the things they caused to be mailed were “innocent in themselves,” if their mailing was “a step in a plot.” Badders v. United States, supra, at 394.27 It then argues that the jury properly could find that the mailings, complained of in the first 16 counts—namely, the letter notice of a modification in assessed valuation, two letters giving notice of hearings before the Board of Equalization to determine taxable value of property, one letter complying with a property owner‘s request for an “auxiliary tax notice,” and 12 checks of taxpayers and their letters of transmittal28—were, even if innocent in themselves, each “a step in a plot” or scheme to defraud, and that they were caused to be made “for the purpose of executing such scheme” in violation of
We agree that the factual situation is unique, and, of course, agree, too, that the fact there is no reported decision involving similar factual circumstances or legal theories is not determinative. But in the light of the particular circumstances of this case, and especially of the facts (1) that the School Board was legally required to assess and collect taxes, (2) that the indictment did not charge nor the proofs show that the taxes assessed and collected were in excess of the District‘s needs or that they were “padded” or in any way unlawful, (3) that no such issue was submitted to, nor, hence, determined by, the jury, (4) that the Board was compelled to collect and receipt for the taxes by state law, which, in the circumstances here, compelled it to use and cause (here, principally by permitting) the use of the mails for those purposes, we must conclude that the legally compelled mailings, complained of in the first 16 counts of the indictment, were not shown to have been unlawful “step[s] in a plot,” Badders v. United States, supra, 240 U. S., at 394, “part[s] of the execution of the fraud,” Kann v. United States, supra, 323 U. S., at 95, “incident to an essential part of the scheme,” Pereira v. United States, supra, 347 U. S., at 8, or to have been made “for the purpose of executing such scheme,” within the meaning of
Nor, in the light of the facts in this record, can it be said that the mailings complained of in the first 16 counts of the indictment constituted false pretenses and
Counts 17, 18 and 19 of the indictment relate to a different subject. They charged, and there was evidence tending to show, that petitioners Oscar Carrillo, Sr., and Garza fraudulently obtained gasoline and other filling station products and services for themselves upon the credit card and at the expense of the District knowing, or charged with knowledge, that the oil company would use the mails in billing the District for those things. The mailings complained of in those counts were two invoices, said to contain amounts for items so procured by Carrillo and Garza, mailed by the oil company, at Houston, to
Inasmuch as the twentieth count charged petitioners with conspiring to commit the offense complained of in Count 1, and inasmuch as, on the facts of this record, that count cannot be sustained, it follows that petitioners’ convictions upon the twentieth count cannot stand.
In view of our stated conclusions, it is unnecessary to discuss other contentions made by petitioners.
The strongest element in the Government‘s case is that petitioners’ behavior was shown to have been so bad and brazen, which, coupled with the inability or at least the failure of the state authorities to bring them to justice,30 doubtless persuaded the Government to undertake this prosecution. But the showing, however convincing, that state crimes of misappropriation, conversion, embezzle-
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, whom MR. JUSTICE HARLAN and MR. JUSTICE STEWART join, dissenting.
The petitioners, nine individuals and two banks, were indicted for violations of, and conspiracy to violate, the Mail Fraud Act,
Together these petitioners controlled a public body created under Texas law, the Benavides Independent School District (hereinafter called the District), which administered the public schools within its geographical confines, and dominated the bank serving as depository of the District, designated as such pursuant to statute.
The District was vested by Texas law with a limited taxing power,
Conduct or transactions fall under the Mail Fraud Act if it be established that there existed “any scheme or artifice to defraud” and that the mails were used “for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do.” Of the nineteen substantive violations charged in this indictment, sixteen were mailings in connection with the tax collection process carried out by petitioners. As to those counts this case presents the question whether the Act is violated by a public officer vested by law with a discretionary power to levy taxes for the purpose of providing funds estimated to meet projected expenditures for a statutorily defined public need for the satisfaction of which the power is entrusted to him, who exercises that power over several years to collect through the mails sums which could as a matter of law be so expended, but a portion of which he at all times, throughout successive years of fixing the tax rate and utilizing the proceeds, actually intends to and does appropriate to his own uses.
Petitioners urge that because the amounts they collected each year were credited to the taxpayers on the District‘s books, and were not in excess of what they might, had they lawfully applied the proceeds, have expended for school maintenance, the collections were in effect lawful and did not constitute a fraudulent scheme
Insofar as the defense rests on the lawfulness of the isolated act of mailing as a claim of immunity from the Mail Fraud statute, it is without substance. It has long been established that under this Act “[i]ntent may make an otherwise innocent act criminal, if it is a step in a plot.” Badders v. United States, 240 U. S. 391, 394. In fact the heart of petitioners’ effort to escape their conviction is the claim that the skulduggeries of which the jury found them guilty do not fall within the scope of the Mail Fraud statute because in sending out the tax bills they were the neutral vehicles of legal compulsion, although at the time that they sent them out, and having full governmental control of the process of controlling revenue and expending it, they had predetermined that the proceeds were not to be fully applied to school purposes but were in part to be diverted into their private pockets. It bespeaks an audacious lack of humor to suggest that the law anywhere under any circumstances requires tax collectors who send out tax bills, and who also have complete control over the returns, to send out bills to an amount which they predeterminedly design to put in part to personal uses. That is certainly not the law of Texas in any event. While it may be assumed that, since the maintenance of the schools was the duty of the District, petitioners were obligated to collect some amount of ad valorem tax for
Petitioners’ claim raises the further question whether, even if the mailings were not immune in themselves, they were too remote from the purpose of the fraudulently designed scheme to be deemed in “execution” of it. Whether a mailing which occurs in discernible relation to a scheme to defraud is an execution of it is a question of the degree of proximity of the mailing to the scheme. The statute was enacted “with the purpose of protecting the public against all such intentional efforts to despoil, and to prevent the post office from being used to carry them into effect . . . .” Durland v. United States, 161 U. S. 306, 314. Whether the post office was so used must be the Court‘s central inquiry. If the use of the mails occurred not as a step in but only after the consummation of the scheme, the fraud is the exclusive concern of the States. Kann v. United States, 323 U. S. 88. The adequate degree of relationship between a mailing which occurs during the life of a scheme and the scheme is of course not a matter susceptible of geometric determination. In United States v. Young, 232 U. S. 155, we said that it is not neces-
For the purposes of the statute, the significance of the relationship between scheme and mailing depends on the interconnection of the parts in a particular scheme. Ordinarily, once the fraud is proved its scope is not a matter of dispute. But when, as here, the fraud involves the abuse of a position of public trust, closer analysis is required. Petitioners seek to denude their scheme of its range and pervasiveness. They construct an artifact whereby their fraudulent scheme was, as it were, intramural, unrelated to taxpayers to whom they sent the tax bills, and so the mails, the ingenuous argument runs, were not used in the fraud because the wrongdoing only arose after the mails had fulfilled their function by bringing the returns. The wrong is thus nicely pigeonholed as embezzlement, without any prior scheme.
The fraudulent, episodic, petty-cash peculations of a clerk at a regulatory agency are frauds upon that agency, and although taxpayers generally are injured by the fraud and in that sense are the ultimate objects of it, the mailings by which the tax proceeds are collected which constitute the vast government funds out of which the agency‘s funds are taken, are, as a matter of practical good sense by which law determines such issues of causation, see Gully v. First National Bank, 299 U. S. 109, 117-118, too remote from the scheme to be deemed in execution of it. But to analogize petitioners’ scheme to a conven-
The petitioners themselves controlled the entire conduct of the District‘s fiscal affairs, and their own decision, limited only by a statutory ceiling, determined the amount of the tax that would be collected. Petitioners’ exercise of their power to fix the amount of the tax, an exercise which ultimately assured to themselves an excess of funds over their intended expenditures or reserves for school purposes, was necessarily central to their scheme. Such control obliterates the line they seek to draw between themselves and the entity it was their duty to serve. By demanding and collecting what they intended to misappropriate they made the process of collection an inseparable element of their scheme.
The petitioners’ control of the District and therefore of its tax rate, similarly disposes of their contentions that one or another element of a technical fraud upon the taxpayers of the District is absent. The suggestion that in the collection of taxes there was no representation by petitioners to the taxpayers of the District might be pertinent were the system a self-executing tax structure under which the time for, and amount of, the payment due and the payee to whom it is to be made are designated by statute, so that the tax collector, serving as an automatic conduit, does nothing to cause collection of the tax. These collectors, however, were the prime actors in the structure. They not only billed the taxpayers but also fixed the rate of the tax itself. For that reason it cannot be said that the taxpayers paid their taxes solely under compulsion of Texas law, and not at all in reliance upon the implied false representation of petitioners that the amounts assessed were collected to meet projected expenditures. The taxpayers necessarily depended upon petitioners’ setting of the rate for knowledge of what amount was to be paid. Each taxpayer who testified revealed
The intention of petitioners to have their bills paid is beyond dispute. But they urge an absence of detriment to the taxpayers who did rely since their payments were ordinarily credited to them on the District‘s books. The claim is frivolous. Whether they are viewed as having overpaid for school services, or having been deprived of services for which they paid, the detriment to the taxpayers is self-evident. It is in part for this reason that petitioners’ attempted analogy between this case and the case of a doctor‘s secretary who sends out just bills but intends to steal from the proceeds is to urge that a mountain is a molehill. Even if the secretary, rather than her principal, is regarded as making the representation to patients that they may pay her, they are not injured by so doing, and they are not defrauded. The result would be very different, as petitioners concede, if the bills so sent out were padded by her. Here inescapably the bills were padded by the predetermined increase, which, though within technical legal limits, was for fraudulent ends.
Although this analysis appropriately disposes of this case it goes beyond the requirements of the statute. While the Mail Fraud Act is directed against the utilization of the mails in carrying out a fraudulent scheme, the penal prohibition of the use of the mails for a fraud does not turn on the niceties of the common-law offense of obtaining money or goods under false pretenses, see Durland v. United States, 161 U. S. 306, 312-313. The statute sought to forbid the use of the mails as a vehicle for a fraudulent
Petitioners finally urge as to these counts that their convictions cannot be sustained because, even if the facts were sufficient to sustain a conviction, the indictment did not allege, the proof did not show, the conduct of the trial and the summations to the jury did not reveal, and the charge to the jury did not present, such a case either as to fact or law. It is apparent however that every aspect of this prosecution was focused on the Government‘s basic assertion that because petitioners controlled the District‘s affairs, continuously schemed to and did misappropriate funds while continuing to collect falsely
The indictment in every substantive count expressly alleged “a scheme and artifice to defraud the BISD, persons obligated by the laws of the State of Texas to pay taxes to the BISD (hereinafter called taxpayers), the State of Texas, and . . . to obtain the money and property of the BISD and the taxpayers for themselves . . . .” The primary devices allegedly undertaken to effectuate the scheme were the obtaining and maintaining of control of the District and its depository bank, and the collection of taxes by mail from District taxpayers during the period of the scheme.
The Government‘s proof established a design of petitioners to obtain control of the political and fiscal mechanism of the District, and that, having obtained control and being the dominus of the District, they sent out tax bills of the returns from which, year after year, they took a portion for themselves. The proof thus established a continuing course of conduct constituting, by the very nature of the systematic continuity of the practice, a conscious scheme to utilize their powers of government, of which setting the tax rate was one, for fraudulent purposes, in the execution of which the mails of the United States were a necessary instrument. Objections to government evidence offered on the substantive counts as to events before 1951 were overruled on the well-settled ground that the offers were admissible to show the continuing scheme to acquire, maintain and abuse control of the District.
In its summation the Government repeatedly characterized the scheme which it had sought to prove as one to employ petitioners’ comprehensive control to max-
The remaining three substantive counts of the indictment charged that as part of the same scheme to control and defraud the District the petitioners used the District‘s charge account to obtain gasoline for their personal use, which acts resulted in the use of the mails by the vendor to present the appropriate bills to the District. The mailings of two such bills and of one payment by the District were charged as separate offenses. Two matters are to be noted. First, it is suggested that there was no misrepresentation by the petitioners, because only the correct bill of the vendor was sent to the District. No reason appears however why a bill which the jury could have found petitioners knowingly caused to be sent to the District constitutes less of a representation by them that the gasoline consumed was used for the District‘s purposes than a voucher directly submitted by them for reimbursement for cash purchases.
Petitioners raise no substantial objections to the conspiracy convictions that are not disposed of by what has already been said. The petitioners’ other attacks against the verdict require no more discussion than given below. 265 F. 2d 894.
I would affirm the judgments.
Notes
| Names | Counts on which convicted | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| George B. Parr | All | Aggregate of 10 years and $20,000 fine. |
| D. C. Chapa | All | Aggregate of 5 years. |
| B. F. Donald | 1-14, 17-20 | Aggregate of 4 years. |
| Jesus G. Garza | All but 7 | 3 years, but suspended on probation. |
| Santiago Garcia | 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 15, 17-19 | 3 years, but suspended on probation. |
| Octavio Saenz | All but 7 | Aggregate of 3 years. |
| Oscar Carrillo, Sr. | All | Aggregate of 4 years. |
| O. P. Carrillo | 20 | 2 years, but suspended on probation. |
| Jesus Oliveira | 20 | 2 years, but suspended on probation, and fine of $7,000. |
| Texas State Bank of Alice | All | Fine of $2,000. |
| San Diego State Bank | 1-3, 7, 10-12, 16, 20 | Fine of $900. |