United States v. Stephens

421 F.3d 503 (2005)

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United States v. Stephens

United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
421 F.3d 503 (2005)

RW

Facts

The federal government (plaintiff) prosecuted Wayne Stephens (defendant) for wire fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1343. The trial evidence established that Stephens used the "add to" function of his company's computer payroll system to submit a string of requests for the reimbursement of $67,395 in business expenses that Stephens never actually incurred. At the time, there was no written company policy explicitly prohibiting such conduct. However, the company did have a credit card policy, which allowed an employee to obtain cash advances for personal purposes only if the employee repaid the company at the end of the month. The company required employees to submit expense-account billings for supervisor review. At first, Stephens complied with that requirement, but he stopped complying when a new supervisor proved to be remiss in checking expense-account billings. Stephens no longer sent his billings to the supervisor, and entered his own name in the supervisor field of his expense account. Initially, Stephens submitted billings for relatively small amounts. Stephens knew that if he was caught, he could claim that the billing resulted from a simple clerical error. Gradually, however, Stephens started submitting larger billings that eventually caught the attention of company auditors. The ensuing audit uncovered Stephens' history of falsified billings. The jury convicted Stephens. On appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Stephens contended that he made no misrepresentations and that the jury lacked sufficient evidence that he intended to defraud his employer.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning (Rovner, J.)

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