12/13/2016

Courts

Supreme Court: Defrauding Bank Accounts is Bank Fraud

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that laws prohibiting bank fraud protect banks and customers alike. In an 8-0 decision, justices upheld a lower court ruling that individuals can be convicted of bank fraud even if they never targeted the bank directly or the institution did not suffer financial loss.

In the case, Lawrence Eugene Shaw was convicted of 17 counts of bank fraud for stealing bank account information and using a fake PayPal account to steal $307,000 from a Bank of America account. Shaw argued that he shouldn’t have been convicted because he did not intend to defraud the bank itself, only the account holder.