In U.S. v. Maze (1974), the U.S. government relied on the mail fraud statute to prosecute Thomas Maze for stealing his roommate’s BankAmericard and using
it to pay his bills for a cross-national road trip to California in his roommate’s car, which he also stole.
U.S. v. Maze 414 U.S. 395, 94 S.Ct. 645 (1974)
History
Thomas Maze, Defendant, was convicted in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky at Louisville on four counts of mail fraud.
The Court of Appeals reversed. The Supreme Court affirmed.
REHNQUIST, J.
Facts
Thomas E. Maze moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and there shared an apartment with Charles L. Meredith. In the spring of that year Maze’s fancy lightly turned
to thoughts of the sunny Southland, and he thereupon took Meredith’s BankAmericard and his 1968 automobile and headed for Southern California. By
presenting the BankAmericard and signing Meredith’s name, Maze obtained food and lodging at motels located in California, Florida, and Louisiana. Each of
these establishments transmitted to the Citizens Fidelity Bank & Trust Co. in Louisville, which had issued the BankAmericard to Meredith, the invoices
representing goods and services furnished to Maze. Meredith, meanwhile, on the day after Maze’s departure from Louisville, notified the Louisville bank that
his credit card had been stolen.
Upon Maze’s return to Louisville he was indicted on four counts of violation of the federal mail fraud statute (18 U.S.C. § 1341).
The mail fraud counts of the indictment charged that Maze had devised a scheme to defraud the Louisville bank, Charles L. Meredith, and several merchants
in different States by unlawfully obtaining possession of the BankAmericard issued by the Louisville bank to Meredith, and using the card to obtain goods
and services. The indictment charged that Maze had obtained goods and services at four specified motels by presenting Meredith’s BankAmericard for
payment and representing himself to be Meredith, and that Maze knew that each merchant would cause the sales slips of the purchases to be delivered by
mail to the Louisville bank which would in turn mail them to Meredith for payment. The indictment also charged that the delay in this mailing would enable
Maze to continue purchasing goods and services for an appreciable period of time.
Maze was tried by a jury in the United States District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. At trial, representatives of the four motels identified the sales
invoices from the transactions on Meredith’s BankAmericard which were forwarded to the Louisville bank by their motels. An official of the Louisville bank
testified that all of the sales invoices for those transactions were received by the bank in due course through the mail, and that this was the customary
method by which invoices representing BankAmericard purchases were transmitted to the Louisville bank.
The jury found Maze guilty as charged on all counts, and he appealed the judgment of conviction to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. That court
reversed the judgment as to the mail fraud statute. Because of an apparent conflict among the courts of appeals as to the circumstances under which the
fraudulent use of a credit card may violate the mail fraud statute, we granted the Government’s petition for certiorari. For the reasons stated below, we affirm
the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Opinion
The applicable parts of the mail fraud statute provide as follows:
Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent
pretenses, representations, or promises . . . for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice or attempting so to do . . . knowingly causes to be delivered
by mail according to the direction thereon, or at the place at which it is directed to be delivered by the person to whom it is addressed, any (matter or thing
whatever to be sent or delivered by the Postal Service) shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. 18 U.S.C. § 1341.
We assume, as did the Court of Appeals, that the evidence would support a finding by the jury that Maze “caused” the mailings of the invoices he signed from
the out-of-state motels to the Louisville bank. But the more difficult question is whether these mailings were sufficiently closely related to Maze’s scheme to
bring his conduct within the statute.
Under the statute, the mailing must be for the purpose of executing the scheme, as the statute requires, but it is not necessary that the scheme contemplate
the use of the mails as an essential element. (Pereira v. United States). The Government relies on Pereira, supra, and United States v. Sampson, 371 U.S. 75,
83 S.Ct. 173, 9 L.Ed.2d 136 (1962), to support its position, while Maze relies on Kann v. United States, and Parr v. United States, 363 U.S. 370 (1960).
In Kann, corporate officers and directors were accused of having set up a dummy corporation through which to divert profits of their own corporation to their
own use. As a part of the scheme, the defendants were accused of having fraudulently obtained checks payable to them which were cashed or deposited at
a bank and then mailed for collection to the drawee bank. This Court held that the fraud was completed at the point at which defendants cashed the checks.
The Government, however, relying on United States v. Sampson, argues that essential to the success of any fraudulent credit-card scheme is the “delay”
caused by use of the mails “which aids the perpetrator . . . in the continuation of a fraudulent credit card scheme and the postponement of its detection.” In
Sampson, various employees of a nationwide corporation were charged with a scheme to defraud businessmen by obtaining advance fees on the promise
that the defendants would either help the businessmen to obtain loans or to sell their businesses.
Even after the checks representing the fees had been deposited to the accounts of the defendants, however, the plan called for the mailing of the accepted
application together with a form letter assuring the victims that the services for which they had contracted would be performed. The Court found that Kann
did not preclude the application of the mail fraud statute to “a deliberate, planned use of the mails after the victims’ money had been obtained.