United States v. D'Andrea

107 F.3d 949, 1997 U.S. App. LEXIS 3869, 1997 WL 85113
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedMarch 5, 1997
Docket95-2105
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 107 F.3d 949 (United States v. D'Andrea) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. D'Andrea, 107 F.3d 949, 1997 U.S. App. LEXIS 3869, 1997 WL 85113 (1st Cir. 1997).

Opinion

TORRUELLA, Chief Judge.

On October 13, 1994, Defendant-Appellant Thomas D’Andrea (“D’Andrea”) was indicted on one count of bank fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344 (Count One) and six counts of making false statements to a federally insured financial institution in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1014. After a two-week trial in the District Court of Rhode Island, a jury found D’Andrea guilty on all counts. The district eourt sentenced D’Andrea to five years’ imprisonment on Count One and two years’ imprisonment for each of the other counts, to run concurrently, and three years’ supervised release on Count One and one year supervised release on the other counts, also to run concurrently. In addition, the district court ordered D’Andrea to make restitution to the Resolution Trust Corporation in the amount of $2.2 million for losses related to the fraudulent loan activities. D’Andrea now claims errors related to both the trial and sentencing phases. Concluding that the district court did not commit error, we affirm D’Andrea’s conviction and sentence.

BACKGROUND

In late 1988, D’Andrea, Robert D’Andrea (D’Andrea’s brother), Gary Lowenstein, and Michael Tulman applied for and obtained a $2.88 million loan from New England Federal Savings Bank (“New England Federal” or “the bank”), a federally insured institution. The loan was obtained for the purpose of acquiring a warehouse and truck terminal located in Cranston, Rhode Island. Because the bank would only lend up to eighty percent of the total purchase price of the warehouse, D’Andrea, and at least one of the sellers of the property, Frank Paolino, schemed to inflate the purchase price of the warehouse from just over two million dollars to $4.18 million. By so inflating the price, D’Andrea was able to receive from the bank a loan in the amount of the purchase price, thereby relieving himself and his fellow purchasers of the burden of putting any of their own money into the purchase of the warehouse.

The scheme went as follows. D’Andrea represented to New England Federal that the purchasers would pay the $1.3 million difference required to meet the $4.18 million purchase price. In order to make up this gap, D’Andrea submitted false records to the bank indicating that certain deposits had already been made to the sellers. In addition, the bank requested agreements indicating the amount of rent paid by each of the tenants at the warehouse. D’Andrea forged the signatures of the officers of each of the warehouse tenants on documents that he then submitted to the bank. D’Andrea also *-631 submitted a document to the bank indicating a tenant-landlord relationship with a company that never rented space at the warehouse. Two witnesses testified that D’Andrea presented them with copies of documents containing falsified rental amounts for tenants at the warehouse. D’Andrea also admitted that he forged tenant signatures on tenant-at-will agreements without the knowledge or permission of officials at the tenant-companies.

During the course of the trial, D’Andrea testified that he took pains to pay off the $2.88 million loan from New England Federal. On cross-examination of D’Andrea, the government elicited testimony that he used proceeds from a $6.9 million loan from Rhode Island Central Credit Union to pay off part of that loan. D’Andrea obtained this loan along with four others, the Zarella brothers. 1 D’Andrea testified that, in obtaining this loan, he forged the signatures of the Zarella brothers’ wives on a guarantee form.

Finally, D’Andrea used the warehouse property located in Cranston, Rhode Island, obtained through the use of false documents, as security for yet another loan, for $585,000 from Rhode Island Central Credit Union.

DISCUSSION

D’Andrea makes numerous claims on appeal, most of which we discern to be related to his sentencing. We will consider each argument individually.

I. Government’s Use of the Phrase “Straw Borrowers”

Without citation to any supporting ease law, D’Andrea argues as follows:

At trial, over D’Andrea’s objection, the prosecutor repeatedly asked D’Andrea whether he used ‘straw borrowers’ in his dealings with Rhode Island Central Credit Union_ D’Andrea denied using. ‘straws’, but regardless, the jury could not have been unaffected, because the term ‘straw borrowers’ was a hot-button term repeatedly used by the news media to describe unsophisticated participants in real estate ventures who were said to [have] been induced to join with real estate developers in funding speculative and unsound real estate ventures.

We read this statement to be an argument that the prejudicial effect of the government’s use of the term “straw borrowers” so outweighed its probative value that the district court should have barred use of the term. “Unfairly prejudicial evidence is evidence ... that ‘triggers [the] mainsprings of human action [in such a way as to] cause the jury to base its decision on something other than the established proposition in the case.’” United States v. Currier, 836 F.2d 11, 18 (1st Cir.1987) (quoting 1 Weinstein’s Evidence § 408, 36-39 (1986)).

We review a district court’s evidentia-ry rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Trenkler, 61 F.3d 45, 56 (1st Cir.1995). We grant a district court’s on-the-spot determination of prejudice and proba-tiveness wide latitude and “ ‘[o]nly in exceptional circumstances will we reverse the exercise of a district court’s informed discretion vis-a-vis the relative weighing of probative value and unfairly prejudicial effect.’” United States v. DiSanto, 86 F.3d 1238, 1252 (1st Cir.1996) (quoting Currier, 836 F.2d at 18), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 117 S.Ct. 1109, — L.Ed.2d — (1997).

Although the judge did not make explicit findings regarding the probativeness of the inquiry into the use of “straw borrowers,” the government stated that it was pursuing the inquiry as rebuttal to D’Andrea’s statement that he had approximately $100,-000 on deposit with Rhode Island Central Credit Union when the credit union closed. The government was attempting to show that, although D’Andrea lost a significant sum of money because of the failure of the credit union, he also owed the credit union millions of dollars, including money from loans obtained using others’ names.

The government’s line of questioning was probative for rebuttal purposes and was limited in nature. “Rebuttal evidence may be introduced to explain, repel, contradict or *-630 disprove an adversary’s proof.” United States v. Laboy, 909 F.2d 581, 588 (1st Cir.1990).

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Bluebook (online)
107 F.3d 949, 1997 U.S. App. LEXIS 3869, 1997 WL 85113, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-dandrea-ca1-1997.