The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a person could still be convicted of bank fraud even if they never targeted the bank directly or the institution did not suffer financial loss, The Hill reported today. In a unanimous decision, the court’s fifth of the term, the justices said it is “sufficient” that the victim — here, the bank — was deprived of its right to use the property while the actual subject of the theft was a third party. The case, Shaw v. United States, centers on Lawrence Eugene Shaw, who was convicted of 17 counts of bank fraud for stealing a Taiwanese businessman’s Bank of America account information and draining his account of $307,000 over a four-month period in 2007. Shaw used a fake PayPal account that he created in the businessman’s name and joint savings accounts he opened using his father’s name. He argued, however, that he shouldn’t have been convicted because he never intended to defraud Bank of America. In fact, Bank of America never lost money. PayPal reimbursed the bank for the $131,000 it returned to the businessman, Stanley Hsu. In the end, PayPal bore the loss of $106,000, and Hsu lost over $170,000 for failing to notify the bank of the fraudulent transactions within 60 days. In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Stephen Breyer called Shaw’s argument unpersuasive.
