Supreme Court of the United States · 2000-11-07
Case and law context
Role: applied; posture: criminal; motion to dismiss mail fraud counts denied, jury conviction on two mail fraud counts (1994 and 1995 video poker license renewals) plus RICO and money laundering counts predicated on them, affirmed by CA5; certiorari on whether an unissued state license is "property" of the State; result: claimant-lost; claim:
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Variant | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /us/531/0012-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2000 | Separate section 1346 theory; outside property-fraud claim | not_reached Excluded from merits counts rule-announced / meritsThe Court notes no honest-services theory was asserted for the licensing scheme; 1346 is used only to show that Congress restored one intangible right and no other. | section-1346/not-invoked-licensing-fraud | Significantly, Congress covered only the intangible right of honest services even though federal courts, relying on McNally, had dismissed, for want of monetary loss to any victim, prosecutions under § 1341 for diverse forms of public corruption, including licensing fraud.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [8930:9203] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c. |
| /us/531/0012-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2000 | Traditional money or property as an object | not Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: law; theory: the State's interest in its unissued video poker licenses is property in the hands of the victim; subject: theory=the State's interest in its unissued video poker licenses is property in the hands of the victim The State's stake is regulatory (police power), not proprietary: fees and revenue share flow only after issuance and were paid in full; the right to choose licensees is sovereign power, unlike a patent holder's or franchisor's saleable asset. Federalism clear-statement rule and lenity reinforce the reading. Conviction vacated on this element as a matter of law, so recorded as applied. | victim-property/unissued-state-license-in-regulators-hands | Louisiana law allows certain businesses to operate video poker machines. La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§27:301 to 27:324 (West Supp. 2000). The State itself, however, does not run such machinery.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [1129:1315] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.The indictment alleged that Cleveland and Goodson had violated § 1341 by fraudulently concealing that they were the true owners of TSG in the initial license application and three renewal applications mailed to the State.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [3447:3668] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.Without doubt, Louisiana has a substantial economic stake in the video poker industry.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [12315:12401] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.The State receives the lion’s share of its expected revenue not while the licenses remain in its own hands, but only after they have been issued to licensees. Licenses pre-issuance do not generate an ongoing stream of revenue.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [13054:13280] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.Tellingly, as to the character of Louisiana’s stake in its video poker licenses, the Government nowhere alleges that Cleveland defrauded the State of any money to which the State was entitled by law.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [13761:13960] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.Indeed, there is no dispute that TSG paid the State of Louisiana its proper share of revenue, which totaled more than $1.2 million, between 1993 and 1995.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [13961:14115] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.It does not suffice, we clarify, that the object of the fraud may become property in the recipient’s hands; for purposes of the mail fraud statute, the thing obtained must be property in the hands of the victim.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [724:935] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.these intangible rights of allocation, exclusion, and control amount to no more and no less than Louisiana’s sovereign power to regulate.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [14722:14859] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.We conclude that § 1341 requires the object of the fraud to be “property” in the victim’s hands and that a Louisiana video poker license in the State’s hands is not “property” under § 1341.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [21722:21911] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.Our holding means that Cleveland’s § 1341 conviction must be vacated.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [22088:22157] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c. |
| /us/531/0012-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2000 | Traditional money or property as an object | not Counted merits instance applied / merits basis: law; theory: alternate ground first urged in this Court: the second clause ("for obtaining money or property") is an independent offense satisfied because the license is property in the licensee's hands; subject: theory=alternate ground first urged in this Court: the second clause ("for obtaining money or property") is an independent offense satisfied because the license is property in the licensee's hands Reaffirms McNally: the two clauses of 1341 are not separate offenses; what the defendant gains is irrelevant unless the victim loses property. The "fact" line is the Government's contention about the license's character, not a finding. | victim-property/thing-obtained-is-property-only-in-recipients-hands | Because a video poker license is property in the hands of the licensee, the Government says, Cleveland “obtained] . . . property” and thereby committed the second offense even if the license is not property in the hands of the State.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [19861:20094] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.But we rejected that construction of the statute, instead concluding that the second phrase simply modifies the first by “ma[king] it unmistakable that the statute reached false promises and misrepresentations as to the future as well as other frauds involving money or property.”Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [20467:20747] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c.Although we do not here question that video poker licensees may have property interests in their licenses, we nevertheless disagree with the Government’s reading of §1341.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/us_531.jsonl#/us/531/0012-01; Unicode character offsets [20095:20266] (end exclusive); SHA-256 7475017476dcba887c9f39abcfaabec69164a6cec5dec1a7d59cf1ff35702e5c. |
| /us/531/0012-01 — Supreme Court of the United States · 2000 | Scheme or artifice to defraud | not_reached Excluded from merits counts applied / meritsThe false statements in the license applications (concealed true ownership) are recited as charged; whether they amounted to a scheme to defraud was not reviewed once the property object failed. | Unspecified variant | No source quotation recorded for this block. |