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Bank Fraud Defined

By Stanley A. Twardy Jr. and Elizabeth A. Latif
July 02, 2014

The U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the provision of the federal bank fraud statute which makes it a crime to “knowingly execut[e] a scheme ' to obtain” property owned by, or under the custody of, a bank “by means of false or fraudulent pretenses,” does not require the government to prove that a defendant intended to defraud a bank into paying him or her money nor that a risk of loss was posed to a bank. 18 U.S.C. ' 1344. The Court was careful to hold, however, that the bank fraud statute does not reach “every fraudulent transaction in the economy whenever a check is involved,” a concern of Justice Anthony Kennedy at oral argument on the case.

The Case

In Loughrin v. United States, the petitioner employed several different schemes to fraudulently obtain money from retail stores. In one scheme, Loughrin stole checks from residential mailboxes and altered them by crossing out or erasing the existing writing or by washing, bleaching, ironing and drying the checks. He also stole convenience checks from mailboxes and forged signatures on them. Loughrin then used the altered or forged checks to purchase items at retail stores and, on occasion, returned the items he had purchased at the retail stores in exchange for cash.

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