United States v. N. John Fontana, II

948 F.2d 796, 1991 U.S. App. LEXIS 25783, 1991 WL 218572
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedOctober 30, 1991
Docket91-1529
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 948 F.2d 796 (United States v. N. John Fontana, II) 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. N. John Fontana, II, 948 F.2d 796, 1991 U.S. App. LEXIS 25783, 1991 WL 218572 (1st Cir. 1991).

Opinions

TIMBERS, Circuit Judge:

Appellant N. John Fontana appeals from a judgment of conviction for bank fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1344 (1988), and for interstate transportation of falsely made securities, 18 U.S.C. § 2314 (1988).

Fontana’s conviction results from a check kiting scheme in which he maintained two distinct checking accounts on behalf of Medical Dental Convenient Care, Inc., a corporation of which he was then President, and in which he wrote checks drawn on one account containing insufficient funds and deposited those checks in the other account. That activity resulted in inflated checking account balances in both banks.

Fontana raises three issues on appeal: first, whether his conviction under § 1344 can stand in light of the government’s failure to prove fraudulent misrepresentation; second, whether his convictions under § 2314 can stand, in that his own signature, not a forgery, appeared on the checks in question; and third, whether the district court erred in refusing to suppress incriminating statements made by Fontana after he asserted his Fifth Amendment right to counsel.

For the reasons which follow, first, we affirm the bank fraud conviction (Count One) pursuant to § 1344, holding that the indictment and the jury charge both were adequate and that neither required the government to bear the burden of proving fraudulent misrepresentation in establishing the existence of a scheme or artifice to defraud. Second, we affirm Fontana’s conviction pursuant to § 2314, since as a matter of law his activity constituted the transportation of “falsely made securities”; but we hold, with the government’s consent, that only Counts Two and Thirteen may be affirmed; we vacate the convictions on the remaining twenty counts on which Fontana was convicted; but we hold it is unnecessary to remand for resentencing, since Fon-tana was sentenced under the Sentencing Guidelines, with all counts grouped and the ultimate sentence being based on the amount of loss. See Castle v. United States, 368 U.S. 13 (1961) (per curiam) (applying the holding in Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81 (1953)). The penalty assessment is reduced to $150. Third, we affirm the district court’s refusal to suppress Fon-tana’s incriminating statements.

I.

We shall summarize only those facts and prior proceedings believed necessary to an understanding of the issues raised on appeal.

Fontana was the President of Medical Dental Convenient Care, Inc. (Medical Dental), a corporation doing business in New Hampshire. Fontana and his wife, Terri Fontana, were the sole stockholders of the corporation. From February 1, 1989 to May 31, 1989, as President of that corporation, Fontana maintained a checking account in the name of the corporation at the Numérica Savings Bank (Numérica), located in Manchester, New Hampshire. Terri Fontana was the sole authorized signatory of that account according to signature cards maintained by Numérica. Fontana maintained a second checking account in the name of Medical Dental at the State Street Bank (State Street), located in Boston, Massachusetts. Fontana’s son, N. John Fontana III, the former president and treasurer of Medical Dental, was the sole signatory of that account according to the State Street signature card. All deposits were insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

On August 15, 1990, a federal grand jury indicted Fontana, charging bank fraud by check kiting in Count One, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1344. Counts Two through Twenty Four charged that this activity violated 18 U.S.C. § 2314, which prohibits the [799]*799knowing transportation of falsely made securities in interstate commerce.

We believe that a general overview of the banking process may be helpful in understanding the operation of the check kiting scheme. A check is deemed “uncleared” until it has travelled through the entire check processing cycle. This cycle is best illustrated by example: during a normal cycle, a check drawn on the Medical Dental account in State Street would be presented by Fontana for deposit in the corporation’s account maintained in Numér-ica. The check then would be forwarded from Numérica to a check processing center, and ultimately back to State Street, the bank of origin, for payment out of the Medical Dental checking account there. This process normally would require several days from the date of deposit in Numéri-ca to the date of presentation and transfer of funds from the State Street account to the Numérica account.

At the time of deposit, Numérica has discretionary power to await completion of the full processing cycle before releasing to Medical Dental the funds represented by the check, where the deposits exceeded $5,000. For certain valued customers, however, Numérica maintains a policy which allows it to release funds represented by the amount of the check prior to the close of the processing cycle, essentially resulting in an advance or loan in the amount of the check to Medical Dental’s Numérica account. This early release also is known as “drawing from uncollected funds”. Numerica’s advance or loan would then be recouped once the check had completed the processing cycle and Numérica had collected the funds from Medical Dental’s State Street account. State Street also maintains a similar policy of early payment for certain of its customers.

For checks drawn on the State Street account when the account had adequate funds to cover the amounts of the checks, the advance by Numérica raised no problems. For checks drawn on the State Street account when the account had insufficient funds, however, Numerica’s decision prematurely to advance funds to the Medical Dental account left Numérica with no means of recouping or repaying the advances. The bank’s only recourse in such a case was to pursue a civil remedy against the depositor, Medical Dental, who had reaped the immediate benefit of the advance.

In the instant case, the government charged that Fontana wrote checks drawn on the State Street account when that account had insufficient funds to cover the checks and subsequently deposited those checks in the second account maintained at Numérica. In view of the accelerated release of funds under Numerica’s internal policy, the balance established in the Num-érica account immediately reflected the new deposit. Fontana then would write a check drawn on the inflated Numérica account and deposit that check in the State Street account. The latter account would reflect immediately the new deposit because of State Street’s policy of premature deposit of funds in that account. By a synchronized schedule of deposits, the account balances appeared larger than the actual balances as of each date of deposit. This enabled Fontana for relatively short periods to use bank funds advanced to him as his own but which were not his.

The checks drawn on insufficient funds involved in this scheme totalled approximately $18.7 million.

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Bluebook (online)
948 F.2d 796, 1991 U.S. App. LEXIS 25783, 1991 WL 218572, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-n-john-fontana-ii-ca1-1991.